LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

COPYRIGHT OFFICE. 

No registration of title of this book 
as a preliminary to copyright protec- 
tion has been found. 

nrT ^ 19t0 

Forwarded to Order Division --HM-L..5:. 

(Date) 

(Apr. n, 1901— 5,000.) 



WATERLOO 



Se tlvis takers. Is 



VICTOR 
li'VGO 

at- tlve'lt^ .5l\op ^vlvick 
is it^w En5i>' AU 






Copyright 

1907 

By Elbert Hubbard 



f^scaWed from 
Cop-y-ilght Office. 




Waterloo 

Byron 

HERE was a sound of rev- 
elry by night, 
And Belgium's capital had 
gathered there 
1 Her Beauty and her Chiv-^5" 
airy, and bright 
The lamps shone o'er fair 
women and brave men ; 
A thousand hearts beat hap- 
pily ; and when 
Music arose with its voluptuous swell. 
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake 

again, 
And all went merry as a marriage-bell ; 
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a 
rising knell ! 

Did ye not hear it?— No ; 'twas but the wind, 
Ov the car rattling o'er the stony street; 
Oxx with the dance ! let joy be unconfined ; 
No sleep till morn, when Youth & Pleasure 

meet 
To chase the glowing Hours with flying 

feet— 
But, hark! — that heavy sound breaks in 

once more 
As if the clouds its echo would repeat ; 
And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before ! 
Arm! Arm! it is— it is— the cannon's opening 

roar! 



Within a windowed niche of that high hall 
Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain; he did 

hear 
That sound the first amidst the festival, 
And caught its tone with Death's prophetic 

ear. 
And when they smiled because he deemed 

it near, 
His heart more truly knew that peal too 

well 
Which stretched his father on a bloody 

bier, 
And roused the vengeance blood alone could 

quell: 
He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, 

fell. 



Ah! then and there was hurrying to and 
fro, 

And gathering tears, and tremblings of dis- 
tress. 

And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago 

Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness; 

And there were sudden partings, such as 
press 

The life from out young hearts, and choking 
sighs 

Which ne'er might be repeated ; who could 
guess 

If ever more should meet those mutual eyes. 
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn 
could rise ! 



And there was mounting in hot haste : the 

steed, 
The mustering squadron, and the clattering 

car, 
Went pouring forward with impetuous 

speed, 
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war ; 
And the deep thunder peal on peal afar ; 
And near, the beat of the alarming drum 
Roused up the soldier ere the morning 

star; 
While thronged the citizens with terror 

dumb. 
Or whispering, with white lips— ** The foe! 

They come ! they come ! " 

And wild and high the " Cameron's gather- 
ing" rose! 

The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's 
hills 

Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon 
foes :— 

How in the noon of night that pibroch 
thrills. 

Savage and shrill! But with the breath 
which fills 

Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountain- 
eers 

With the fierce native daring which instils 

The stirring memory of a thousand years. 
And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each clans- 
man's ears ! 



And Ardennes waves above them her green 

leaves, 
Dewy with nature's tear-drops, as they 

pass, 
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves. 
Over the unreturning brave,— alas ! 
Ere evening to be trodden like the grass 
Which now beneath them, but above shall 

grow 
In its next verdure, when this fiery mass 
Of living valor, rolling on the foe 
And burning with high hope, shall moulder 

cold and low. 



LAST noon beheld them full of lusty life, 
Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay, 
The midnight brought the signal-sound of 

strife, 
The morn the marshalling in arms, -— the 

day 
Battle's magnificently-stern array ! 
The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which 

when rent 
The earth is covered thick with other clay, 
Which her own clay shall cover, heaped 
and pent. 
Rider and horse,— friend, foe, — in one red burial 
blent! 




THE BATTLE OF 
WATERLOO 




On The Nivelles Road 

FINE May morning of 
1861, a wayfarer, the 
person who is telling 
this story, was coming 
from Nivelles and was 
proceeding toward La 
Hulpe. He was on foot 
and following, betw^een 
tw^o row^s of trees, a 
wide paved road which undulates over a 
constant succession of hills, that raise the 
road and let it fall again, and form, as it 
were, enormous waves s^ He had passed 
Lillois & Bois-Seigneur Isaac, and noticed 
in the west the slate-covered steeple of 
Braine T AUeud, w^hich looks like an over- 
turned vase 5^ He had just left behind 
him a wood upon a hill, and at the angle 
of a cross-road, by the side of a sort of 
worm-eaten gallows which bore the in- 
scription, **01d barrier. No. 4," a wine- 
shop, having on its front the following 
notice s<^ *'The four winds, Echabeau, 
private coffee-house.'* 
About half a mile beyond this pot-house 
he reached a small valley, in which there 

7 



is a stream that runs through an arch 
formed in the causeway ^^ The clump of 
trees, wide-spread but very green, which 
fills the valley on one side of the road, 
is scattered on the other over the fields, 
& runs gracefully & capriciously toward 
BraineTAUeud. On the right, and skirting 
the road, were an inn, a four-wheeled 
cart in front of the door, a large bundle 
of hop poles, a plough, a pile of dry shrubs 
near a quick-set hedge, lime smoking in 
a square hole, and a ladder lying along 
an old shed with straw^ partitions s^ A 
girl was hoeing in a field, where a large 
yellow bill — probably of a show^ at some 
Kermesse — was flying in the wind s<^ At 
the corner of the inn, a badly paved path 
ran into the bushes by the side of a pond, 
on which a flotilla of ducks ^vas naviga- 
ting. The wayfarer turned into this path. 
C After proceeding about one hundred 
yards, along a wall of the fifteenth cent- 
ury, surmounted by a coping of crossed 
bricks, he found himself in front of a large 
arched stone gate, with a rectangular 
moulding, in the stern style of Louis 
XIV., supported by two flat medallions. 
A severe facade was over this gate ; a 

8 



wall perpendicular to the facade almost 
joined the gate and flanked it at a right 
angle s<^ On the grass-plot in front of the 
gate lay three harrows, through which 
the May flowers were growing pell-mell. 
The gate was closed by means of two 
decrepit folding doors, ornamented by 
an old rusty hammer. 
The sun was delightful, and the branches 
made that gentle May rustling, which 
seems to come from nests even more than 
from the wind. A little bird, probably in 
love, was singing with all its might. The 
w^ayfarer stooped and looked at a rather 
large circular excavation in the stone to 
the right of the gate, which resembled a 
sphere. At this moment the gates opened 
and a peasant woman came out. She saw 
the wayfarer and noticed what he was 
looking at. 

**Itwas a French cannon-ball that made 
it,'* she said, and then added: "What you 
see higher up there, on the gate near a 
nail, is the hole of a heavy shell, w^hich 
did not penetrate the w^ood." 
**What is the name of this place?" the 
Avayfarer asked. 
** Hougomont," said the woman. 

9 



The wayfarer drew himself up, he walked 
a few steps, and then looked over the 
hedge s^ He could see on the horizon 
through the trees a species of mound, and 
on this mound something w^hich, at a 
distance, resembled a lion s^ He was on 
the battle-field of Waterloo. 



Hougomont 




I HIS estate w^as a mourn- 
ful spot, the beginning 
of the obstacle, the first 
resistance which that 
great woodman of Eu- 
rope, called Napoleon, 
encountered at Water- 
loo; the first knot under 
the axe-blade. It was a 
chateau, and is now^ but a farm. For the 
antiquarian Hougomont is Hugo-mons; 
it was built by Hugo, Sire de Sommeril, 
the same w^ho endowed the sixth chap- 
elry of the abbey of Villers. The wayfarer 
pushed open the door, elbowed an old 
caleche under a porch, & entered a yard. 
The first thing that struck him in this 
enclosure was a gate of the sixteenth 

10 



century, which no\v resembles an arcade, 
as all has fallen around it. A monumental 
aspect frequently springs up from ruins. 
Near the arcade there is another gateway 
in the wall, with key-stones in the style 
of Henri IV., through which can be seen 
the trees of an orchard s^ By the side of 
this gateway a dunghill, mattocks, and 
shovels, a few carts, an old well w^ith its 
stone slab and iron windlass, a frisking 
colt, a turkey displaying its tail, a chapel 
surmounted by a little belfry, and a blos- 
soming pear tree growing in espalier along 
the chapel wall, — such is this yard, the 
conquest of which w^as a dream of Napo- 
leon's s<^ This nook of earth, had he been 
able to take it, would probably have given 
him the world. Chickens are scattering 
the dust there with their beaks, and you 
hear a growl, — it is a large dog, which 
shows its teeth and fills the place of the 
English ^^ The English were admirable 
here; Cooke's four companies of guards 
resisted at this spot for seven hours the 
obstinate attack of an army. 
Hougomont, seen on a map, buildings & 
enclosures included, presents an irregular 

quadrangle, of which one angle has been 

11 



broken off. In this angle is the southern 
gate, within point-blank range of this 
wall s^ Hougomont has two gates, the 
southern one, which belongs to the cha- 
teau, and the northern w^hich belongs to 
the farm. Napoleon sent against Hougo- 
mont his brother Jerome ; Guilleminot's, 
Foy's, & Bachelie's divisions were hurled 
at it; nearly the whole of Reille's corps 
was employed there and failed ; and Kel- 
lerman's cannon-balls rebounded from 
this heroic wall. Bauduin's brigade was 
not strong enough to force Hougomont 
on the north, and Soye's brigade could 
only attack it on the south mthout 
carrying it. 

The farm buildings border the court-yard 
on the south, and a piece of the northern 
gate, broken by the French, hangs from 
the wall. It consists of four planks nailed 
on two cross beams, and the scars of the 
attack may still be distinguished upon it. 
The northern gate, which w^as broken 
down by the French, and in which a 
piece has been let in to replace the panel 
hanging to the wall, stands, half open, at 
the extremity of the yard ; it is cut square 
in a wall w^hich is stone at the bottom, 

12 



brick at the top, which closes the yard 
on the north side s<^ It is a simple gate, 
such as may be seen in all farm-yards, 
with two large folding doors made of 
rustic planks; beyond it are fields. The 
dispute for this entrance was furious ; for 
a long time all sorts of marks of bloody 
hands could be seen on the side-post of 
the gate, and it was here that Bauduin fell. 
The storm of the fight still lurks in the 
court-yard: horror is visible there; the 
incidents of the fearful struggle are pet- 
rified in it; people are living and dying 
in it, — it was only yesterday. The walls 
are in the pangs of death, the stones 
fall, the breaches cry out, the holes are 
w^ounds, the bent and quivering trees 
seem making an effort to fly. 
This yard was more built upon in 1815 
than it is now^; buildings which have 
since been removed, formed in it redans 
and angles s<^ The English barricaded 
themselves in it; the French penetrated 
but could not hold their ground there. 
By the side of the chapel stands a wing 
of the chateau, the sole relic left of the 
manor of Hougomont, in ruins, w^e might 
almost say gutted s<^ The chateau was 

13 



employed as a keep, the chapel served as 
a block-house b^ Men exterminated each 
other there. The French, fired upon from 
all sides, from behind walls, from grana- 
ries, from cellars, from every windo>v, 
from every air-hole, from every crack in 
the stone, brought up fascines, and set 
fire to the avails and men ; the musketry 
fire was replied to by arson. 
In the ruined wing you can look through 
mndows defended by iron bars, into the 
dismantled rooms of a brick building; 
the English guards were ambuscaded in 
these rooms, and the spiral staircase, 
hollowed out from ground-floor to roof, 
appears like the interior of a broken 
shell. The staircase has two landings ; the 
English, besieged on this landing and 
massed on the upper stairs, broke aw^ay 
the lowest 5^ They are large slabs of blue 
stone which form a pile among the net- 
tles. A dozen steps still hold to the wall ; 
on the first the image of a trident is 
carved, and these inaccessible steps are 
solidly set in their bed s«» All the rest 
resemble a toothless jaw. There are tw^o 
trees here, one of them dead, and the 
other, which was wounded on the foot, 

14 



grows green again in April. Since 1815 it 
has taken to growing through the stair- 
case s^ s^ So* 

Men massacred each other in the chapel, 
and the interior w^hich is grown quiet 
again, is strange s<^ Mass has not been 
said in it since the carnage, but the altar 
has been left— an altar of coarse wood 
supported by a foundation of rough 
stone s<^ Four whitewashed walls, a door 
opposite the altar, two small arched win- 
dows, a large wooden crucifix over the 
door, above the crucifix a square air-hole 
stopped up w^ith hay ; in a corner, on the 
ground, an old window sash, w^ith the 
panes all broken, — such is the chapel. 
Near the altar is a wooden statue of St. 
Anne, belonging to the fifteenth century; 
the head of the infant Saviour has been 
carried away by a shot s^ The French, 
masters for a moment of the chapel and 
then dislodged, set fire to it s^ The 
flames filled the building, and it became 
a furnace; the door burnt, the flooring 
burnt, but the wooden Christ was not 
burnt; the fire nibbled away the feet, of 
which only the blackened stumps can 
now be seen, and then stopped. It was a 

15 



miracle, say the country people sc» The 
w^alls are covered with inscriptions. Near 
the feet of Christ you read the name 
Henquinez ; then these others, Conde de 
Rio Maior, Marquis y Marquisa de Alma- 
gro (Habana) b^ There are French names 
with marks of admiration, signs of anger. 
The wall was whitewashed again in 1849, 
for the nations insulted each other upon 
it. It w^as at the door of this chapel that a 
body was picked up, holding an axe in its 
hand ; it w^as the body of sub-lieutenant 
Legros s<^ s^ s^ 

On leaving the chapel you see a well on 
your left hand. As there are two wells in 
this yard, you ask yourself why this one 
has no bucket and windlass? Because 
w^ater is no longer drawn from it. Why 
is it not drawn? Because it is full of 
skeletons. The last man w^ho drew water 
from this w^ell w^as a man called Willem 
van Kylsom : he was a peasant w^ho lived 
at Hougomont, and w^as gardener there. 
On June 18, 1815, his family took to flight 
and concealed themselves in the woods. 
The forest round the abbey of Villers 
sheltered for several days and nights the 
dispersed luckless country people. Even 

16 



at the present day certain vestiges, such 
as old burnt trunks of trees, mark the 
spot of these poor encampments among 
the thickets s^ Willem van Kylsom re- 
mained at Hougomont "to take care of 
the chateau," and concealed himself in a 
cellar. The English discovered him there; 
he was dragged from his lurking-place, 
and the frightened man was forced by 
blow^s with the flat of a sabre to wait on 
the combatants. They were thirsty, and 
this Willem brought them drink, and it 
was from this well he drew the water. 
Many drank there for the last time, and 
this well, from which so many dead men 
drank, was destined to die too. After the 
action, the corpses were hastily interred; 
death has a way of its own of harrassing 
victory, and it causes pestilence to follow 
glory s^ Typhus is an annex of triumph. 
This well was deep and was converted 
into a tomb. Three hundred dead were 
thrown into it, perhaps with too much 
haste 5<^ Were they all dead ? the legend 
says no. And it seems that, on the night 
following the burial, weak voices were 
heard calling from the well. 
This well is isolated in the centre of the 

17 



yard ; three walls, half of brick, half of 
stone, folded like the leaves of a screen, 
and forming a square tower, surround it 
on three sides, while the fourth is open. 
The back wall has a sort of a shapeless 
peep-hole, probably made by a shell. This 
tow^er once had a roof of which only the 
beams remain, and the iron braces of the 
right-hand wall form a cross. You bend 
over and look down into a deep brick 
cylinder full of gloom s«» All round the 
well the lower part of the wall is hidden 
by nettles so» This Avell has not in front 
of it the large blue slab usually seen at 
all Belgian w^ells so» Instead of it, there 
is a frame-work, supporting five or six 
shapeless logs of knotted wood which 
resemble large bones. There is no bucket, 
chain, or windlass remaining : but there 
is still the stone trough, at w^hich the 
horses w^ere watered s<^ The rain-w^ater 
collects in it, and from time to time a 
bird comes from the neighboring forest 
to drink from it and then fly away. 
One house in this ruin, the farm-house, 
is still inhabited, and the door of this 
house opens on the yard. By the side of 
a pretty -Gothic lock on this gate there, is 

18 



an iron handle. At the moment when the 
Hanoverian lieutenant Wilda seized this 
handle in order to take shelter in the 
farm, a French sapper cut off his hand 
with a blow of his axe. The old gardener 
Van Kylsom, who has long been dead, 
was grandfather of the family which now^ 
occupies the house. A grey-headed wo- 
man said to me : **I was here, I was three 
years old, and my sister, who was older, 
felt frightened and cried s^ I was carried 
aw^ay to the woods in my mother^s arms, 
and people put their ears to the ground 
to listen. I imitated the cannon and said, 
*boom, boom.' '* A door on the left-hand 
of the yard, as w^e said, leads into the 
orchard, which is terrible ^^ It is in three 
parts, we might almost say, in three acts. 
The first part is a garden, the second the 
orchard, the third a wood. These three 
parts have one common enceinte; near 
the entrance, the buildings of the chateau 
and the farm, on the left a hedge, on the 
right a wall, and at the end a wall. The 
right-hand wall is of brick, the bottom 
one of stone. You enter the garden first ; it 
slopes, is planted with gooseberry bushes, 
is covered w^ith wild vegetation, and is 

19 



closed by a monumental terrace of cut 
stones with balustrades s^ It was a seig- 
neurial garden in the French style, that 
preceded Le Notre : now it is ruins and 
briars. The pilasters are surmounted by 
globes that resemble stone cannon-balls. 
Forty-three balustrades are still erect; the 
others are lying in the grass, and nearly 
all have marks of musket-balls s«» One 
fractured balustrade is laid upon the stem 
like a broken leg. 

It was in this garden, which is lower than 
the orchard, that six voltigeurs of the 
First Light Regiment, having got in and 
unable to get out, and caught like bears 
in a trap, accepted combat w^ith two 
Hanoverian companies, one of which 
was armed with rifles. The Hanoverians 
lined the balustrade and fired down ; the 
voltigeurs, firing up, six intrepid men 
against two hundred, and having no 
shelter but the gooseberry bushes, took 
a quarter of an hour in dying. You climb 
up a few steps and reach the orchard, 
properly so called s^ Here, on these few 
square yards, fifteen hundred men fell in 
less than an hour. The w^all seems ready 
to recommence the fight, for the thirty- 

20 



eight loop-holes pierced by the English 
at irregular heights may still be seen. In 
front of the wall are two English tombs 
made of granite s«* There are only loop- 
holes in the south wall, for the principal 
attack was on that side so» This wall is 
concealed on the outside by a quickset 
hedge. The French came up under the 
impression that they had only to carry 
this hedge, and found the wall an obstacle 
and an ambuscade ; the English Guards, 
behind the thirty-eight loop-holes, firing 
at once a storm of canister and bullets ; 
and Soye*s brigade was dashed to pieces 
against it. Waterloo began thus. 
The orchard, however, was taken; as 
the French had no ladders, they climbed 
up with their nails. A hand-to-hand fight 
took place under the trees, and all the 
grass was soaked with blood, and a bat- 
talion of Nassau, seven hundred strong 
was cut to pieces here s«» On the outside 
the w^all, against which Kellerman*s two 
batteries were pointed, is pock-marked 
w^ith cannon-balls s^ This orchard is sen- 
sitive like any other to the month of May; 
it has its buttercups and its daisies, the 
grass is tall in it, the plough horses browse 

21 



in it, hair ropes on which linen is hung to 
dry occupy the space between the trees, 
and make the visitor bow his head, and 
as you walk along your foot sinks in 
mole holes s^ In the middle of the grass 
you notice an uprooted, out-stretched, 
but still flourishing tree. Major Blackman 
leant against it to die s^ Under another 
large tree close by fell the German General 
Duplat, a French refugee belonging to a 
family that fled upon the revocation of 
the edict of Nantes si^ Close at hand an 
old sickly apple tree, poulticed with a 
bandage of straw^ and clay, hangs its head. 
Nearly all the apple trees are dying of 
old age, and there is not one mthout its 
cannon-ball or bullet. Skeletons of dead 
trees abound in this orchard, ravens fly 
about in the branches, and at the end is a 
wood full of violets. 

Bauduin killed; Foy wounded; massacre, 
arson, carnage, a stream composed of 
English, French, and German blood furi- 
ously mingled ; a well filled w^ith corpses; 
the Nassau regiment and the Brunswick 
regiment destroyed; Duplat killed; Blacks- 
man killed; the English Guards mutilated; 
twenty French battalions of the forty 

22 



composing Reille*s corps decimated ; three 
thousand men in this chateau of Hougo- 
mont alone, sabred, gashed, butchered, 
shot, and burnt, — all this that a peasant 
may say to a traveler at the present day, 
**If you like to give me three francs, 
sir, I will tell you all about the battle of 
Waterloo." 



June 18, 1815 

fOW, let us go back, for 
that is one of the privi- 
leges of the narrator, 
& place ourselves once 
again in the year 1815. 
If it had not rained on 
the night between the 
17th and 18th of June, 
1815, the future of Eu- 
rope would have been changed; a few 
drops of rain more or less made Napoleon 
oscillate s^ In order to make Waterloo 
the end of Austerlitz, Providence only 
required a little rain, and a cloud crossing 
the sky at a season when rain was not 
expected was sufficient to overthrow^ an 
empire ^<^ The battle of Waterloo could 

23 




not begin until half-past eleven, and that 
gave Blucher time to come up s^ Why ? 
Because the ground was moist and it was 
necessary for it to become firmer, that 
the artillery might manoeuvre. Napoleon 
w^as an artillery officer, & always showed 
himself one ; all his battle plans are made 
for projectiles. Making artillery converge 
on a given point was his key to victory. 
He treated the strategy of the opposing 
general as a citadel, and breached it; he 
crushed the w^eak point under grape-shot, 
and he began and ended his battles with 
artillery. Driving in squares, pulverizing 
regiments, breaking lines, destroying and 
dispersing masses, all this must be done 
by striking, striking, striking incessantly, 
and he confided the task to artillery. It 
w^as a formidable method, and, allied to 
genius, rendered this gloomy pugilist of 
w^ar invincible for fifteen years. 
On June 18, 1815, he counted the more 
on his artillery, because he held the 
numerical superiority s^ Wellington had 
only one hundred and fifty-nine guns, 
while Napoleon had two hundred and 
forty so» Had the earth been dry and the 
artillery able to move, the action would 

24 



have begun at six o'clock in the morning. 
It would have been won and over by two 
in the afternoon, three hours before the 
Prussian interlude s^ How much blame 
was there on Napoleon's side for the loss 
of this battle? Is the shipwreck imputable 
to the pilot? Was the evident physical 
decline of Napoleon at that period com- 
plicated by a certain internal diminution? 
Had twenty years of war worn out the 
blade as well as the scabbard, the soul as 
w^ell as the body? Was the veteran being 
awkwardly displayed in the captain? In a 
w^ord, w^as the genius, as many historians 
of reputation have believed, eclipsed? 
Was he becoming frenzied, in order to 
conceal his own weakening from himself? 
Was he beginning to oscillate and veer 
with the wind? ^^ Was he becoming 
unconscious of danger, which is a serious 
thing in a general? ^^ In that class of 
great material men who may be called the 
giants of action, is there an age when 
genius becomes short-sighted ? Old age 
has no power over ideal genius, with the 
Dantes and the Michael Angelos old age 
is growth, but is it declension for the 
Hannibals and the Bonapartes? s«» Had 

25 



Napoleon lost the direct sense of victory ? 
Had he reached a point where he no 
longer saw the rock, guessed the snare, 
and could not discern the crumbling edge 
of the abyss? Could he not scent catas- 
trophes ? s<^ Had the man who formerly 
knew all the roads to victory and pointed 
to them with a sovereign finger, from his 
flashing car, now^ a mania for leading his 
tumultuous team of legions to the preci- 
pices? s<^ Was he attacked at the age of 
forty-six by a supreme madness? Was the 
Titanic charioteer of destiny now only a 
Phaeton? 

We do not believe it. 
His plan of action, it is allowed by all, 
was a masterpiece s^ Go straight at the 
center of the allied line, make a hole 
through the enemy, cut him in two, 
drive the British half over Halle, and the 
Prussians over Tingres, carry Mont St. 
Jean, seize Brussels, drive the German 
into the Rhine and the Englishman into 
the sea— all this was contained for Napo- 
leon in this battle; afterwards he would 
see Sfr s«» 

We need hardly say that we do not pre- 
tend to tell the story of Waterloo here ; 

26 



one of the generating scenes of the drama 
we are recounting is attaching to this bat- 
tle, but the story of Waterloo has been 
already told, and magisterially discussed, 
from one point of view by Napoleon, 
from another by Charras b^ For our part 
we leave the two historians to contend ; 
we are only a distant witness, a passer-by 
along the plain, a seeker bending over 
the earth moulded of human flesh, and 
perhaps taking appearances for realities; 
w^e possess neither the military practice 
nor the strategic competency that au- 
thorizes a system ; in our opinion, 
a chain of accidents governed 
both captains at Waterloo; 
& when destiny, that mys- 
terious accused, enters 
on the scene, we judge 
like the people. 




27 



The Battlefield 




)HOSE who wish to form 
a distinct idea of the bat- 
tle of Waterloo, need 
only imagine a capital 
A laid on the ground. 
The left leg of the A is 
the Nivelles road, the 
right one the Genappe 
road, while the string 
of the A is the broken way running from 
Ohaine to Braine V Alleud &^ The top of 
the A is Mont St. Jean, where Wellington 
is ; the left lower point is Hougomont, 
were Reille is with Jerome Bonaparte; 
the right lower point is La Belle AlUance, 
w^here Napoleon is s^ A little below the 
point where the string of the A meets 
and cuts the right leg, is La Haye Sainte ; 
& in the center of this string is the exact 
spot where the battle w^as concluded. It 
is here that the lion is placed, the invol- 
untary symbol of the heroism of the old 
Guard s^ s^ 

The triangle comprised at the top of the 
A between the tw^o legs & the string, is 
the plateau of Mont St. Jean ; the dispute 

28 



for this plateau was the whole battle so» 
The wings of the two armies extend to 
the right and left of the Genappe and 
Nivelles roads, d'Erlon facing Picton, 
Reille facing Hill b^ Behind the point of 
the A, behind the plateau of St. Jean, is 
the forest of Soignies s<^ As for the plan 
itself, imagine a vast undulating ground ; 
each ascent commands the next ascent, 
and all the undulations ascend to Mont St. 
Jean, where they form the forest. 
Two hostile armies on a battle-field are 
two wrestlers, — one tries to throw the 
other ; they cling to everything ; a thicket 
is a basis; for want of a village to support 
it, a regiment gives way; a fall in the 
plain, a transverse hedge in a good posi- 
tion, a wood, a ravine may arrest the heel 
of that column which is called an army, 
and prevent it slipping s^ The one who 
leaves the field is beaten; and hence the 
necessity for the responsible chief to ex- 
amine the smallest clump of trees, and 
investigate the slightest rise in the ground. 
The two generals had attentively studied 
the plain of Mont St. Jean, which is called 
at the present day the field of Waterloo. 
In the previous year, Wellington, with 

29 



prescient sagacity, had examined it as 
suitable for a great battle. On this ground 
and for this duel of June 18, Wellington 
had the good side and Napoleon the bad; 
for the English army was above, and the 
French army belo\v. 

It is almost superfluous to sketch here 
the appearance of Napoleon, mounted 
and with his telescope in his hand, as he 
appeared on the heights of Rossomme at 
the dawn of June 18 b^ Before we show 
him, aU the world has seen him. The calm 
profile under the little hat of the Brienne 
school, the green uniform, the white fac- 
ings concealing the decorations, the great 
coat concealing the epaulettes, the red 
ribbon under the waistcoat, the leather 
breeches, the white horse with its hous- 
ings of a purple velvet, having in the 
corners crowned N*s and eagles, riding 
boots drawn over silk stockings, the silver 
spurs, the sword of Marengo, — the whole 
appearance of the last of the Caesars rises 
before every mind, applauded by some, 
and regarded sternly by others s^ This 
figure has for a long time stood out all 
light; this was due to a certain legendary 
obscuration which most heroes evolve, 

30 



and which always conceals the truth for 
a longer or shorter period, but at the 
present day we have history and light. 
That brilliancy called history is pitiless; 
it has this strange and divine thing about 
it, that, all light as it is, and because it is 
light, it often throws shadows over spots 
before luminous, it makes of the same 
man two different phantoms, and one at- 
tacks the other, and the darkness of the 
despot struggles w^ith the lustre of the 
captain. Hence comes a truer proportion 
in the definite appreciation of nations; 
Babylon violated, diminishes Alex- 
ander; Rome enchained, diminishes 
Caesar; Jerusalem killed, dimin- 
ishes Titus. Tyranny follows 
the tyrant, & it is a misfortune 
for a man to leave behind 
him a night which 
has his form. 




SI 




The Battle 

LL the world knows the 
first phase of this battle; 
a troubled, uncertain, 
hesitating opening, dan- 
gerous for both armies, 
more so for the Eng- 
lish than the French ^ 
It had rained all night ; 
the ground was satu- 
rated; the rain had collected in hollows 
of the plain as in tubs ; at certain points 
the ammunition w^agons had sunk in up 
to the axletrees and the girths of the 
horses ; if the wheat and barley laid low 
by this mass of moving vehicles had not 
filled the ruts, and made a litter under 
the wheels, any movement, especially in 
the valleys, in the direction of Papelotte, 
would have been impossible. The battle 
began late, for Napoleon, as we have 
explained, was accustomed to hold all 
his artillery in hand like a pistol, aiming 
first at one point, then at another of the 
battle, and he resolved to w^ait until the 
field batteries could gallop freely and for 
this purpose it was necessary that the sun 

32 



should appear and dry the ground so» But 
the sun did not come out; it was no 
longer the rendezvous of Austerlitz so^ 
When the first cannon-shot was fired, the 
English General Colville drew out his 
watch, and saw that it was twenty-five 
minutes to twelve. 

The action was commenced furiously, 
more so perhaps than the emperor desired, 
by the French left wing on Hougomont. 
At the same time Napoleon attacked the 
center by hurling Quiot^s brigade on La 
Haye Sainte, and Ney pushed the French 
right wing against the English left, Avhich 
was leaning upon Papelotte. The attack 
on Hougomont was, to a certain extent, 
a feint, for the plan was to attract Well- 
ington there, and make him strengthen 
his left. This plan would have succeeded 
had not the four companies of Guards 
and Perponcher's Belgian division firmly 
held the position, and Wellington, in- 
stead of massing his troops, found it only 
necessary to send as a reinforcement four 
more companies of Guards and a battalion 
of Brunswickers s<^ The attack of the 
French right on Papelotte was serious ; to 
destroy the English left, cut the Brussels 

3f3 



road, bar the passage for any possible 
Prussians, force Mont St. Jean, drive 
back Wellington on Hougomont, then on 
Braine V AUeud, and then on Halle, — 
nothing was more distinct. Had not a few 
incidents supervened, this attack w^ould 
have succeeded, for Papelotte was taken 
and La Haye Sainte carried. 
There is a detail to be noticed here ^i^ In 
the English infantry, especially in Kempt's 
brigade, there were many recruits, and 
these young soldiers valiantly withstood 
our formidable foot, and they behaved 
excellently as sharpshooters. The soldier 
w^hen thrown out, being left to some ex- 
tent to his own resources, becomes as it 
were his own general ; and these recruits 
displayed something of the French inven- 
tion and fury. These novices displayed 
an impulse<and it displeased Wellington. 
C After the taking of La Haye Sainte, the 
battle vacillated so* There is an obscure 
interval in this day, between twelve and 
four; the middle of this battle is almost 
indistinct, and participates in the gloom 
of the melee. A twilight sets in, and we 
perceive vast fluctuations in this mist, a 
dizzying mirage, the panoply of war at 

?4 



that day, unknown in our times ; flaming 
colpacks; flying sabretasches; cross-belts; 
Grenadier bearskins; Hussar dolmans; red 
boots with a thousand wrinkles; heavy 
shakos enwreathed with gold twist; the 
nearly black Brunswick infantry mingled 
with the scarlet infantry of England ; the 
English soldiers wearing clumsy round 
white cushions for epaulettes; the Han- 
overian light horse with their leathern 
helmets, brass bands, and red horsetails ; 
the Highlanders with their bare knees 
and checkered plaids, and the long white 
gaiters of our Grenadiers, — pictures, but 
not strategic lines ; what a Salvator Rosa, 
but not a Gribeauval, would have revelled 
in s^ s^ so» 

A certain amount of tempest is always 
mingled with a battle 5^ Every historian 
traces to some extent the lineament that 
pleases him in the hurly-burly. Whatever 
the combination of the generals may be, 
the collision of armed masses has incal- 
culable ebbs and flows ; in action the two 
plans of the leaders enter into each other 
and destroy their shape s^ The line of 
battle floats and winds like a thread, the 
streams of blood flow illogically, the 

35 



fronts of armies undulate, the regiments 
in advancing or retiring form capes or 
gulfs, and all these rocks are continually 
shifting their position; where infantry 
was, artillery arrives; where artillery was, 
cavalry dash in ; the battalions are smoke. 
There was something there, but when 
you look for it it has disappeared; the 
gloomy masses advance and retreat; a 
species of breath from the tomb impels, 
drives back, swells, and disperses these 
tragic multitudes s^ What is a battle? An 
oscillation. The immobility of a mathe- 
matical plan expresses a minute and not 
a day. To paint a battle, those powerful 
painters who have chaos in their pencils 
are needed s<^ Rembrandt is worth more 
than Vandermeulin, for Vandermeulin, 
exact at midday, is incorrect at three 
o'clock. Geometry is deceived, and the 
hurricane alone is true, and it is this that 
gives Folard the right to contradict Polyb- 
ius. Let us add that there is always a certain 
moment in which the battle degenerates 
into a combat, is particularized & broken 
up into countless detail facts which, to 
borrow^ the expression of Napoleon him- 
self, "Belong rather to the biography of 

36 



regiments than to the history of thearmy. " 
s^ The historian, in such a case, has the 
evident right to sum up, he can only catch 
the principal outlines of the struggle, and 
it is not given to any narrator, however 
conscientious he may be, to absolutely 
fix the form of that horrible cloud which 
is called a battle. 

This, which is true of all great armed 
collisions, is also peculiarly applicable to 
Waterloo; still, at a certain moment in 
the afternoon, the battle began to assume 
a settled shape. 

In The Afternoon 

IT about four o'clock in 
the afternoon, the situ- 
ation of the English 
army was serious. The 
Prince of Orange com- 
manded the center, Hill 
the right, and Pic ton 
the left. The Prince of 
Orange, wild and in- 
trepid, shouted to the Dutch Belgians: 
s«^ ** Nassau Brunswick, never yield an 
inch.'* Hill, fearfully weakened, had just 

37 




fallen back on Wellington, while Picton 
was dead. At the very moment when the 
English took from the French the flag of 
the One Hundred-fifth Line Regiment, 
the French killed General Picton with a 
bullet through his head. The battle had 
two bases for Wellington, Hougomont 
and La Haye Sainte. Hougomont still held 
out, though on fire, while La Haye Sainte 
was lost s^ Of the German battalion that 
defended it, forty-two men only survived; 
all the officers but five were killed or 
taken prisoners. Three thousand combat- 
ants had been massacred in that focus ; a 
sergeant of the English Guards, the first 
boxer of England & reputed invulnerable 
by his comrades, had been killed there by 
a little French drummer s<^ Barny was 
dislodged, and Alten was sabred ; several 
flags had been lost, one belonging to 
Alten*s division and one to the Luxem- 
bourg battalion, which was borne by a 
prince of the Deux-ponts family s©» The 
Scotch Greys no longer existed ; Ponson- 
by*s heavy dragoons were cut to pieces, 
— this brave cavalry had given away 
before the Lancers of Bex and the Cui- 
rassiers of Traver s^ Of twelve hundred 

38 



sabres only six hundred remained; of 
three lieutenant-colonels, two were kiss- 
ing the ground, Hamilton wounded, and 
Mather killed &<►► Ponsonby had fallen, 
pierced by seven lance wounds ; Gordon 
was dead, March was dead, and two divis- 
ions, the fifth and sixth, were destroyed. 
Hougomont attacked ^^ La Haye Sainte 
taken ; there was only one knot left, the 
center, which still held out. Wellington 
reinforced it; he called in Hill from Merbe- 
Braine and Chasse from Braine V Alleud. 
C The center of the English army, which 
was slightly concave, very dense and 
compact, was strongly situated ; it occu- 
pied the plateau of Mont St. Jean, having 
the village behind it, and before it the 
slope, which at that time was rather steep. 
s<^ It was supported by that strong stone 
house, which at that period was a do- 
mainial property of Nivelles, standing at 
the cross-road, and an edifice dating from 
the sixteenth century, so robust that the 
cannon-balls rebounded without doing it 
any injury so^ All round the plateau the 
English had cut through the hedges at 
certain spots, formed embrasures in the 

hawthorns, thrust guns between branches 

i9 



and loopholed the shrubs, — their artillery 
ivas ambuscaded under the brambles s^ 
This Punic task, incontestably authorized 
by the rules of war which permit snares, 
had been so well effected that Haxo, 
w^ho had been sent by the emperor at 
eight o'clock to reconnoiter the enemy's 
batteries, returned to tell Napoleon that 
there was no obstacle, with the exception 
of the barricades blocking the Nivelles 
and Genappe roads s^ It was the season 
when the wheat is still standing, & along 
the edge of the plateau a battalion of 
Kempt* s brigade, the Ninety-fifth, was 
lying in the tall corn. Thus assured and 
supported, the center of the Anglo-Dutch 
army was in a good position. 
The peril of this position was the forest 
of Soignies, at that time contiguous to the 
battle-field and intersected by the ponds 
of Groenendael and Boitsford. An army 
could not have fallen back into it w^ithout 
being dissolved, regiments w^ould have 
been broken up at once, and the artillery 
lost in the marshes. The retreat, accord- 
ing to the opinion of several professional 
men, contradicted, it is true, by others, 
would have been a flight s©» Wellington 

40 



added to this center a brigade of Cliasse*s 
removed from the right wing, one of 
Wicke*s from the left wing, and Clinton^s 
division s^ He gave his EngHsh — Hal- 
kett's regiments, Mitchell's brigade, and 
Maitland*s guards — as epaulments and 
counterforts, the Brunswick infantry, the 
Nassau contingent, Kielmansegge*s Han- 
overians, and Ompteda's Germans s^ He 
had thus twenty-six battalions under his 
hand; as Charras says, *The right wing 
deployed behind the center.* An enor- 
mous battery w^as masked by earth bags, 
at the very spot where what is called 
**The Museum of Waterloo'* now^ stands, 
and Wellington also had in a little hollow 
Somerset's Dragoon Guards, counting 
one thousand four hundred sabres. They 
were the other moiety of the so justly 
celebrated English cavalry; though Pon- 
sonby was destroyed, Somerset remained. 
The battery which, had it been completed, 
w^ould have been almost a redoubt, was 
arranged behind a very low wall, hastily 
lined with sand bags and a wide slope of 
earth s<^ This work was not finished, as 
there was not time to pallisade it. 
Wellington, restless but impassive, was 

41 



mounted, and remained for the whole 
day in the same attitude, a little in front 
of the old mill of Mont St. Jean, which 
still exists, and under an elm-tree, which 
an Englishman, an enthusiastical Vandal, 
afterwards bought for two hundred francs, 
cut down and carried away. Wellington 
was coldly heroic ; there w^as a shower of 
cannon-balls, and his aid-de-camp Gordon 
was killed by his side. Lord Hill, pointing 
to a bursting shell, said to him, "My 
Lord, what are your instructions, and 
what orders do you leave us, if you are 
killed ? *' "Do as I am doing," Wellington 
answered s^ To Clinton he said, laconic- 
ally, "Hold out here to the last man." 
The day was evidently turning badly, 
and Wellington cried to his old comrades 
of Vittoria, Talavera, and Salamanca, 
"Boys, can you think of giving way? 
Remember old England." 
About four o'clock, the English line fell 
back all at once ; nothing was visible on 
the crest of the plateau but artillery and 
sharpshooters, the rest had disappeared. 
The regiments, expelled by the French 
shell and cannon-balls, fell back into the 
hollow, which at the present day is in- 

42 



tersected by the lane that runs to the 
farm of Mont St. Jean s^ A retrograde 
movement began, the EngUsh front with- 
drew. Wellington was recoiling. "It is the 
beginning of the retreat, * ' Napoleon cried. 




Napoleon in Good Humor 

)HE emperor, though ill 
and suffering on horse- 
back from a local injury, 
had never been so good- 
tempered as on this day. 
^i^ From the morning 
his impenetrability had 
been smihng, and on 
June 18, 1815, this pro- 
found soul, coated with granite, was ra- 
diant. The man who had been sombre at 
AusterUtz was gay at Waterloo S6» The 
greatest predestined men offer these con- 
tradictions, for our joys are a shadow 
and the supreme smile belongs to God. 
s^ Ridet Caesar, Pompeius flebit, the 
legionaries of the Fulminatrix legion used 
to say. On this occasion Pompey was not 
destined to weep, but it is certain that 
Caesar laughed s^ At one o'clock in the 

43 



morning, amid the rain and storm, he had 
explored with Bertrand the hills near 
Rossomme, and was pleased to see the 
long lines of English fires illumining the 
horizon from Frischemont to Braine T Al- 
leud. It seemed to him as if destiny had 
made an appointment with him on a fixed 
day and was punctual s<^ He stopped his 
horse, & remained for some time motion- 
less, looking at the lightning and listening 
to the thunder. The fatalist was heard to 
cast into the night the mysterious w^ords, 
— **We are agreed." Napoleon was mis- 
taken, they w^ere no longer agreed. 
He had not slept for a moment; all the 
instants of the past night had been marked 
with joy for him b^ He rode through the 
entire line of main guards, stopping every 
now and then to speak to the videttes. 
At half-past two he heard the sound of a 
marching column near Hougomont, and 
believed for a moment in a retreat on the 
side of Wellington. He said to Bertrand, 
— "The English rear-guard is preparing 
to decamp. I shall take prisoners the six 
thousand English who have just landed 
at Ostende." He talked cheerfully, & had 
regained the spirits he had displayed dur- 

44 



ing the landing of March 1st, when he 
showed the grand marshal the enthusi- 
astic peasant of the Juan Gulf and said, — 
"Well, Bertrand, here is a reinforcement 
already/* On the night between June 17 
and 18 he made fun of Wellington : ** This 
little Englishman requires a lesson,*' said 
Napoleon s^ The rain became twice as 
violent, and it thundered w^hile the em- 
peror was speaking. At half -past three in 
the morning, he lost one illusion ; officers 
sent to reconnoiter informed him that the 
enemy was making no movement. Noth- 
ing was stirring, not a single bivouac fire 
was extinguished, and the English army 
was sleeping. The silence was profound 
on earth, and there was only noise in the 
heavens s^ At four o'clock a peasant was 
brought to him by the scouts ; this peasant 
had served as guide to a brigade of Eng- 
lish cavalry, probably Vivian's, which 
had taken up a position on the extreme 
left in the village of Ohain. At five o'clock 
tw^o Belgian deserters informed him that 
they had just left their regiments, and the 
English army meant fighting s^ ** All the 
better," cried Napoleon, ** I would sooner 
crush them than drive them back." 

45 



At daybreak he dismounted on the slope 
which forms the angle of the Plancenoit 
road, had a kitchen table & a peasant chair 
brought from the farm of Rossomme, sat 
down with a truss of straw for a carpet, 
and laid on the table the map of the battle- 
field, saying to Soult,--**It is a pretty 
chess-board/* Owing to the night rain, 
the commissariat wagons, which stuck in 
the muddy roads, did not arrive by day- 
break s^ The troops had not slept, were 
wet through and fasting, but this did not 
prevent Napoleon from exclaiming cheer- 
fully to Soult,— ** We have ninety chances 
out of a hundred in our favor." b^ At 
eight o'clock the emperor's breakfast was 
brought, and he invited several generals 
to share it with him. While breakfasting 
somebody said that Wellington had been 
the last evening but one at a ball in Brus- 
sels, and Soult, the rough soldier with his 
archbishop's face, remarked, "The ball 
will be to-day." The emperor teased Ney 
for saying,— "Wellington will not be so 
simple as to wait for your majesty." This 
w^as his usual manner so» "He was fond 
of a joke," says Fleury de Chaboulon; 
"The basis of his character was a pleasant 

46 



humor," says Gourgaud; "He abounded 
with jests, more peculiar than witty," 
says Benjamin Constant. This gaiety of 
the giant is worth dwelHng on; it was he 
w^ho called his Grenadiers, ** Growlers ;** 
he pinched their ears and pulled their 
mustaches." "The emperor was always 
playing tricks with us," was a remark 
made by one of them. During the mys- 
terious passage from Elba to France, on 
February 27, the French brig of war, the 
Zephyr, met the Inconstant, on board 
which Napoleon was concealed, and in- 
quiring after Napoleon, the emperor, who 
still had in his hat the white and violet 
cockade studded with bees which he had 
adopted at Elba, himself laughingly took 
up the speaking trumpet, and answered, 
— "The emperor is quite well." A man 
who jests in this way is on familiar terms 
w^ith events. Napoleon had several out- 
bursts of this laughter during the breakfast 
of Waterloo ; after breakfast he reflected 
for a quarter of an hour ; then two generals 
sat down on the truss of straw with a pen 
in their hand, and a sheet of paper on 
their knee, and the emperor dictated to 
them the plan of the battle s«* At nine 

47 



o'clock, the moment when the French 
army, echelonned and moving in five 
columns, began to deploy, the divisions in 
two lines, the artillery between, the bands 
in front, drums rattling & bugles braying 
— a powerful, mighty, joyous army, a sea 
of bayonets and helmets on the horizon, 
the emperor, much affected, twice ex- 
claimed, — "Magnificent! magnificent!" 
C Between nine & half -past ten, although 
it seems incredible, the whole army took 
up position, & was drawn up in six lines, 
forming, to repeat the emperor's expres- 
sion, "The figure of six Vs.*' s^ A few^ 
minutes after the formation of the line, 
and in the midst of that profound silence 
w^hich precedes the storm of a battle, the 
emperor, seeingthree twelve-pounder bat- 
teries defile, which had been detached by 
his orders from Erlon, Reille, & Lobau's 
brigades, and which were intended to 
begin the action at the spot where the 
Nivelles & Genappe roads crossed, tapped 
Haxo on the shoulder, and said, "There 
are twenty-four pretty girls, general." s^ 
Sure of the result, he encouraged with a 
smile the company of sappers of the first 
corps as it passed him, which he had se- 

48 



lected to barricade itself in Mont St. Jean, 
so soon as tlie village was carried. All this 
security was only crossed by one word 
of human pity; on seeing at his left, at 
the spot where there is now a large tomb, 
the admirable Scotch Greys massed with 
their superb horses, he said, "It is a pity.** 
Then he mounted his horse, rode toward 
Rossomme, & selected as his observatory 
a narrow^ strip of grass on the right of the 
road running from Genappe to Brussels, 
and this was his second station. The third 
station, the one he took at seven in the 
evening, is formidable, — it is a rather 
lofty mound which still exists, & behind 
which the guard was massed in a hollow. 
Around this mound, the balls ricochetted 
on the pavement of the road and reached 
Napoleon s^ As at Brienne, he had round 
his head the whistle of bullets & canister. 
Almost at the spot where his horse's hoofs 
stood, cannon-balls, old sabre-blades, and 
shapeless rust-eaten projectiles, have been 
picked up; a few^ years ago, a live shell was 
dug up, the fusee of which had broken 
off. It was at this station that the emperor 
said to his guide, Lacoste, a hostile timid 
peasant, who was fastened to a hussar*s 

49 



saddle, & tried at each volley of canister 
to hide himself behind Napoleon, ** You 
ass, it is shameful ; you will be killed in 
the back " sa^ The person who is writing 
these lines himself found, w^hile digging 
up the sand in the friable slope of this 
mound, the remains of a shell rotted by 
the oxide of forty-six years, and pieces of 
iron which broke like sticks of barley- 
sugar between his fingers. 
Everybody is aware that the undulations 
of the plains on which the encounter 
between Napoleon and WelUngton took 
place, are no longer as they were on June 
18, 1815 s^ On taking from this mournful 
plain the material to make a monument, 
it w^as deprived of its real relics, & history, 
disconcerted, no longer recognizes itself; 
in order to glorify, they disfigured. Well- 
ington, on seeing Waterloo two years 
after, exclaimed, "My battle-field has been 
altered." s^ Where the huge pyramid of 
earth surmounted by a lion now stands, 
there was a crest which on the side of the 
Nivelles road had a practicable ascent, 
but which on the side of the Genappe 
road was almost an escarpment so* The 
elevation of this escarpment may still be 

50 



imagined by the height of the two great 
tombs which skirt the road from Genappe 
to Brussels; the English tomb on the left, 
the German tomb on the right. There is 
no French tomb, — for France the whole 
plain is a sepulcher. Through the thou- 
sands of cart-loads of earth employed in 
erecting the mound, which is one hun- 
dred and fifty feet high and half a mile in 
circumference, the plateau of Mont St. 
Jean is now accessible by a gentle incline, 
but on the day of the battle, & especially 
on the side of La Haye Sainte, it was 
steep & abrupt. The incline was so sharp 
that the English gunners could not see 
beneath them the farm situated in the 
bottom of the valley, which was the cen- 
ter of the fight B^ On June 18, 1815, the 
rain had rendered the steep road more 
difficult, and the troops not only had to 
climb up but slipped in the mud. Along 
the center of the crest of the plateau ran a 
species of ditch, which it was impossible 
for a distant observer to guess ^^ We will 
state w^hat this ditch was. Braine T AUeud 
is a Belgian village and Ohain is another; 
these villages, both concealed in hollows, 
are connected by a road about a league 

51 



and a half in length, which traverses an 
undulating plain, and frequently buries 
itself between hills, so as to become at 
certain spots a ravine. In 1815, as to-day, 
this road crossed the crest of the plateau 
of Mont St. Jean; but at the present day 
it is level with the ground, while at that 
time it was a hollow way s^ The two 
slopes have been carried aw^ay to form 
the monumental mound. This road was, 
and still is, a trench for the greater part 
of the distance; a hollow trench, in some 
places twelve feet deep, w^hose scarped 
sides were washed down here and there 
by the w^inter rains. Accidents occurred 
there; the road was so narrow where it en- 
tered Braine T Alleud, that a wayfarer was 
crushed there by a wagon, as is proved by 
a stone cross standing near the graveyard, 
which gives the name of the dead man 
as "Monsieur Bernard Debruc, trader, of 
Brussels,*' & the date, ** February, 1637.*' 
It was so deep on the plateau of Mont St. 
Jean, that a peasant, one Mathieu Nicaise, 
was crushed there in 1783 by a fall of 
earth, as is proved by another stone cross, 
the top of w^hich disappeared in the exca- 
vations, but w^hose overthrown pedestal 

52 



is still visible on the grass slope to the left 
of the road between La Haye Sainte and 
the farm of Mont St. Jean. On the day of 
the battle, this hollow way, whose exist- 
ence nothing revealed, a trench on the 
top of the escarpment, a rut hidden in the 
earth, was invisible, that is to say, terrible. 



Emperor Asks a Question 

fAPOLEON, was cheer- 
ful on the morning of 
Waterloo, & had reason 
to be so, for the plan he 
had drawn up was admi- 
rable s^ Once the battle 
had begun, its various 
incidents; the resistance 
of Hougomont; the te- 
nacity of La Haye Sainte; Bauduin killed, 
Foy placed hors de combat; the unex- 
pected wall against which Soye*s brigade 
was broken; the fatal rashness of Guillemi- 
not, who had no petards or powder-bags to 
destroy the farm gates; the sticking of 
the artillery in the mud; the fifteen guns 
without escort captured by Uxbridge in a 
hollow way; the slight effect of the shells 

53 




falling in the English lines, which buried 
themselves in the moistened ground, and 
only produced a volcano of dirt, so that 
the troops were merely plastered with 
mud; the inutility of Piret's demonstra- 
tion on BraineT Alleud, and the whole of 
his cavalry, fifteen squadrons, almost 
annihilated; the English right but slightly 
disquieted and the left poorly attacked; 
Ney*s strange mistake in massing instead 
of echelonning the four divisions of the 
first corps; a depth of twenty-seven ranks 
and a line of two hundred men given up 
in this w^ay to the canister; the frightful 
gaps made by the cannon-balls in these 
masses; the attacking columns disunited; 
the oblique battery suddenly unmasked 
on their flank; Bourgeois, Donzelot, and 
Durutte in danger; Quiot repulsed; Lieu- 
tenant Viot, that Hercules w^ho came from 
the polytechnic school, w^ounded at the 
moment w^hen he was beating in with an 
axe the gates of La Haye Sainte, under the 
plunging fire of the English barricade on 
the Genappe road; Marcognet's division 
caught between infantry & cavalry, shot 
down from the w^heat by Best and Pack, 
and sabered by Ponsonby; its battery of 

54 



seven guns spiked; the Prince of Saxe 
Weimar holding & keeping in defiance of 
Count d'Erlon, Frischemont of Smohain ; 
the flags of the One Hundred and Fifth & 
Forty-fifth regiments which he had cap- 
tured; the Prussian black Hussar stopped 
by the scouts of the flying column of 
three hundred chasseurs, who were beat- 
ing the country between Wavre and 
Plancenoit; the alarming things which 
this man said; Grouchy 's delay; the fif- 
teen hundred men killed in less than 
an hour in the orchard of Hougomont; 
the eighteen hundred laid low even in 
a shorter space of time round La Haye 
Sainte; — all these stormy incidents, pass- 
ing like battle-clouds before Napoleon, 
had scarce disturbed his glance or cast a 
gloom over this imperial face. Napoleon 
was accustomed to look steadily at war; he 
never reckoned up the poignant details; 
he cared little for figures, provided that 
they gave the total — victory. If the com- 
mencement \vent wrong, he did not alarm 
himself, as he believed himself master and 
owner of the end; he knew^ how^ to wait, 
and treated destiny as an equal. He seemed 
to say to fate, *'You would not dare!** 

5S 



COne half light, one half shade, Napoleon 
felt himself protected in good & tolerated 
in evil b^ There was, or he fancied there 
was, for him a connivance, we might say, 
almost a complicity, on the part of events, 
equivalent to the ancient invulnerability; 
and yet, when a man has behind him the 
Beresina, Leipzig, and Fontainebleau, it 
seems as if he could defy Waterloo s«» A 
mysterious frown becomes visible on the 
face of heaven s^ At the moment when 
Wellington retrograded. Napoleon quiv- 
ered s^ He suddenly saw the plateau of 
Mont St. Jean deserted, and the front of 
the English army disappear. The emperor 
half -raised himself in his stirrups, and the 
flash of victory passed into his eyes. If 
Wellington were driven back into the 
forest of Soignies and destroyed, it would 
be the definitive overthrow of England 
by France. It would be Cressy, Poictiers, 
Malplaquet, & Ramilies avenged, the man 
of Marengo would erase Agincourt Be^ 
The emperor, while meditating on this 
tremendous result, turned his telescope 
to all parts of the battle-field. His Guards, 
standing at ease behind him, gazed at him 
with a sort of religious awe s^ He was 

56 



reflecting, he examined the slopes, noted 
the inclines, scrutinized the clumps of 
trees, the patches of barley, and the paths; 
he seemed to be counting every tuft of 
gorse. He looked with some fixity at the 
English barricades, two large masses of 
felled trees, the one on the Genappe road 
defended by two guns, the only ones of all 
the English artillery which commanded 
the battle-field, & the one on the Nivelles 
road, behind which flashed the Dutch bay- 
onets of Chasse's brigade. He remarked 
near this barricade the old chapel of St. 
Nicholas, w^hich is at the corner of the 
cross-road leading to Braine TAlleud s<^ 
He bent down and spoke in a low voice 
to the guide Lacoste s^ The guide shook 
his head with a probably perfidious neg- 
ative s^ So* 

The emperor drew himself up and re- 
flected ; Wellington was retiring, and all 
that w^as needed now^ was to complete 
this retreat by an overthrow. Napoleon 
hurriedly turned and sent off a messenger 
at full speed to Paris to announce that the 
battle w^as gained. Napoleon was one of 
those geniuses from whom thunder issues, 
and he had just found his thunder-stroke; 

57 



he gave Milhaud's Cuirassiers orders to 
carry tlie plateau of Mont St. Jean s«» s^ 



A Surprise 




IHEY were three thou- 
sand five hundred in 
number, and formed a 
front a quarter of a league 
Ij in length; they were 
gigantic men mounted 
on colossal horses s^ 
They formed twenty- 
six squadrons, and had 
behind them, as a support, Lefebvre Des- 
nouette's division, composed of the one 
hundred & sixty gendarmes, the chasseurs 
of the Guard, eleven hundred and ninety- 
seven sabres, & the lancers of the Guard, 
eight hundred and eighty lances ^^ They 
wore a helmet without a plume, and a 
cuirass of wrought steel, and w^ere armed 
with pistols and a straight sabre. In the 
morning the whole army had admired 
them when they came up at nine o'clock, 
with bugles sounding, while all the bands 
played "Veillons au salut de T Empire," 
in close column with one battery on their 

58 



flank, the others in their center, and de- 
ployed in two ranks, and took their place 
in that powerful second line, so skilfully 
formed by Napoleon, which, having at 
its extreme left Kellermann's Cuirassiers, 
and on its extreme right Milhaud's Cui- 
rassiers, seemed to be endowed with two 
wings of steel. 

The aid-de-camp Bernard carried to them 
the emperor's order; Ney drew^ his sabre 
and placed himself at their head, and the 
mighty squadrons started. Then a formid- 
able spectacle was seen; the whole of this 
cavalry, with raised sabres, with standards 
flying, and formed in columns of division, 
descended, with one movement and as 
one man, with the precision of a bronze 
battering-ram opening a breach, the hill 
of the Belle Alliance s^ They entered 
the formidable valley in which so many 
men had already fallen, disappeared in the 
smoke, & then, emerging from the gloom, 
reappeared on the other side of the valley, 
still in a close compact column, mounting 
at a trot, under a tremendous canister fire, 
the frightful muddy incline of the plateau 
of Mont St. Jean. They ascended it, stern, 
threatening, and imperturbable; between 

59 



the breaks in the artillery and musketry 
fire, the colossal tramp could be heard ^^ 
As they formed two divisions, they Tvere 
in two columns; Wathier's division was 
on the right, Delord's on the left s^ At a 
distance it appeared as if tw^o immense 
steel lizards were crawling toward the 
crest of the plateau; they traversed the 
battle-field like a flash. 
Nothing like it had been seen since the 
capture of the great redoubt of the Mos- 
kova by the heavy cavalry; Murat w^as 
missing, but Ney w^as there. It seemed as 
if this mass had become a monster, and had 
but one soul; each squadron undulated, 
and swelled like the rings of a polyp s^ 
This could be seen through a vast smoke 
w^hich was rent asunder at intervals; it was 
a pell-mell of helmets, shouts, and sabres, 
a stormy bounding of horses among can- 
non, and a disciplined and terrible array; 
while above it all flashed the cuirasses like 
the scales of the dragon. Such narratives 
seemed to belong to another age; some- 
thing like this vision was doubtless trace- 
able in the old Orphean epics describing 
the men-horses, the ancient hippanthrop- 
ists, those Titans with human faces and 

60 



equestrian chest whose gallop escaladed 
Olympus, — horrible, sublime, invulnera- 
ble beings, gods & brutes. It was a curious 
numerical coincidence that twenty-six 
battalions were preparing to receive the 
charge of these twenty-six squadrons so* 
Behind the crest of the plateau, in the 
shadow of the masked battery, thirteen 
English squares, each of two battalions 
and formed two deep, with seven men in 
the first lines and six in the second, were 
waiting, calm, dumb, & motionless, w^ith 
their muskets, for what w^as coming s<^ 
They did not see the cuirassiers, and the 
cuirassiers did not see them; they merely 
heard this tide of men ascending. They 
heard the swelling sound of three thou- 
sand horses, the alternating and symmet- 
rical sound of the hoof, the clang of the 
cuirasses, the clash of the sabres, and a 
species of great and formidable breathing. 
s<K There was a long and terrible silence, 
and then a long file of raised arms, brand- 
ishing sabres, and helmets, and bugles & 
standards, and three thousand heads with 
great mustaches, shouting "Long live the 
emperor ! '* appeared above the crest. The 
whole of this cavalry debouched on the 

61 



plateau, & it was like the commencement 
of an earthquake. 

All at once, terrible to relate, the head of 
the column of cuirassiers facing the Eng- 
lish left reared with a fearful clamor s^ 
On reaching the culminating point of the 
crest, furious and eager to make their ex- 
terminating dash on the English squares 
and guns, the cuirassiers noticed between 
them and the English a trench, a grave. 
It was the hollow road of Ohain. Itwasa 
frightful moment, — the ravine was there, 
unexpected, yawning, almost precipitous, 
beneath the horses* feet, and with a depth 
of twelve feet betw^een its two sides. The 
second rank thrust the first into the abyss; 
the horses reared, fell back, slipped w^ith 
all four feet in the air, crushing & throw- 
ing their riders. There was no means of 
escaping; the entire column was one huge 
projectile so» The force acquired to crush 
the English, crushed the French, and the 
inexorable ravine would not yield till it 
w^as filled up. Men & horses rolled into it 
pell-mell, crushing each other, & making 
one large charnel-house of the gulf, and 
w^hen this grave was full of living men 
the rest passed over them so» Nearly one- 

62 



third of Dubois* brigade rolled into this 
abyss s^ This commenced the loss of the 
battle. A local tradition, which evidently 
exaggerates, saysthattwo thousand horses 
and fifteen hundred men w^ere buried in 
the hollow w^ay of Ohain. These figures 
probably comprise the other corpses cast 
into the ravine on the day after the battle. 
Napoleon, before ordering this charge, 
had surveyed the ground, but had been 
unable to see this hollow way, which did 
not form even a ripple on the crest of the 
plateau. Warned, however, by the little 
white chapel which marks its juncture 
with the Nivelles road, he had asked La- 
coste a question, probably as to whether 
there was any obstacle ^^ The guide an- 
swered no, and we might almost say 
that Napoleon's catastrophe was brought 
about by a peasant's shake of the head. 
C Other fatalities were yet to arise. Was 
it possible for Napoleon to win the battle? 
s<^ We answer in the negative b^ Why? 
On account of Wellington, on account of 
Blucher? s^ No; on account of God ^^ 
Bonaparte, victor at Waterloo, did not 
harmonize with the law of the nineteenth 
century. Another series of facts was pre- 

63 



paring, in Tvliich Napoleon liad no longer 
a place; the ill will of events had been 
displayed long previously s©^ It ivas time 
for this vast man to fall; his excessive 
weight in human destiny disturbed the 
balance. This individual alone was of more 
account than the universal group; such 
plethoras of human vitality concentrated 
in a single head — the w^orld, mounting to 
one man's brain— would be mortal to civ- 
ilization if they endured &^ The moment 
had arrived for the incorruptible supreme 
equity to reflect, and it is probable that 
the principles and elements on which the 
regular gravitations of the moral order as 
of the material order depend, complained. 
s<^ Streaming blood, over-crowded grave- 
yards, mothers in tears, are formidable 
pleaders s^ When the earth is suffering 
from an excessive burden, there are 
mysterious groans from the shadow, 
which the abyss hears. Napoleon 
had been denounced in infini- 
tude, and his fall w^as decided. 
s^ Waterloo is not a battle, 
but a transformation 
of the universe b^ s^ 



64 



The Plateau of Mont St. Jean 




)HE battery was unmask- 
ed simultaneously with 
the ravine, — sixty guns 
and the thirteen squares 
thundered at the cuiras- 
siers at pointblank range 
s<^ The intrepid General 
Delord gave a military 
salute to the English 
battery s<^ The whole of the English field 
artillery had entered the squares at a gal- 
lop; the cuirassiers had not even a moment 
for reflection. The disaster of the hollow 
way had decimated but not discouraged 
them, they w^ere of that nature of men 
whose hearts grow^ large when their 
number is diminished. Wathier's column 
alone suffered in the disaster; but Delord's 
column, which he had ordered to wheel 
to the left, as if he suspected the trap, 
arrived entire. The cuirassiers rushed at 
the English squares at full gallop, with 
hanging bridles, sabres in their mouths, & 
pistols in their hands. There are moments 
in a battle when the soul hardens a man, so 
that it changes the soldier into a statue, 

65 



and all flesh becomes granite s^ The Eng- 
lish battalions, though fiercely assailed, 
did not move. Then there was a frightful 
scene, all the faces of the English squares 
were attacked simultaneously, and a fren- 
zied whirl surrounded them. But the cold 
infantry remained impassive; the front 
rank kneeling received the cuirassiers on 
their bayonets, w^hile the second fired at 
them; behind the second rank the artil- 
lerymen loaded their guns, the front of 
the square opened to let an eruption of 
canister pass, and then closed again. The 
cuirassiers responded by attempts to crush 
their foe; their great horses reared, leaped 
over the bayonets, & landed in the center 
of the four living walls. The cannon-balls 
made gaps in the cuirassiers, and the cui- 
rassiers made breaches in the squares s^ 
Files of men disappeared, trampled down 
by the horses, and bayonets w^ere buried 
in the entrails of these centaurs s^ Hence 
arose horrible wounds, such as were prob- 
ably never seen elsewhere. The squares, 
w^ere broken by the impetuous cavalry, 
contracted without yielding an inch of 
ground; inexhaustible in canister they 
produced an explosion in the midst of the 

66 



assailants. The aspect of this combat was 
monstrous; the squares were no longer 
battalions, but craters; these cuirassiers 
w^ere no longer cavalry, but a tempest, — 
each square was a volcano attacked by a 
storm ; the lava combated the hghtning. 
CThe extreme right square, the most 
exposed of all, as it was in the air, was 
nearly annihilated in the first attack. It was 
formed of the Seventy-fifth Highlanders; 
the piper in the center, while his comrades 
w^ere being exterminated around him, was 
seated on a drum, with his pibroch under 
his arm, and playing mountain airs. These 
Scotchmen died, thinking of Ben Lothian, 
as the Greeks did, remembering Argos s<^ 
A cuirassier's sabre, by cutting through 
the pibroch & the arm that held it, stopped 
the tune by killing the player. 
The cuirassiers, relatively few in number, 
and reduced by the catastrophe of the 
ravine, had against them nearly the whole 
English army ; but they multiplied them- 
selves, and each man was worth ten b^ 
Some Hanoverian battalions, however, 
gave way; Wellington saw it and thought 
of his cavalry s^ Had Napoleon at this 
moment thought of his infantry, the battle 

67 



would have been won, and this f orgetful- 
ness was his great and fatal fault s^ All at 
once the assailers found themselves as- 
sailed; the English cavalry were on their 
backs, before them the squares, behind 
them Somerset with the one thousand four 
hundred dragoon guards s^ Somerset had 
on his right Dornberg with the German 
chevau-legers, and on his left Trip with 
the Belgian carbineers; the cuirassiers, at- 
tacked on the flank and in front, before 
and behind, by infantry and cavalry, were 
compelled to make a front on all sides. 
But what did they care? s®» They were a 
w^hirlwind, their bravery became inde- 
scribable ^^ s^ 

In addition, they had behind them the 
still thundering battery, and it was only 
in such a w^ay that these men could be 
wounded in the back s«» One of these 
cuirasses w^ith a hole through the left 
scapula, is in the Waterloo Museum. For 
such Frenchmen, nothing less than such 
Englishmen w^as required s<^ It was no 
longer a melee, it was a headlong fury, a 
hurricane of flashing swords. In an instant 
the one thousand four hundred dragoons 
were only eight hundred; & Fuller, their 

68 



lieutenant-colonel, was dead. Ney dashed 
up with Lefebvre Desnouette*s Lancers 
and Chasseurs; the plateau of Mont St. 
Jean was taken and retaken, and taken 
again. The cuirassiers left the cavalry to 
attack the infantry, or to speak more cor- 
rectly, all these men collared each other 
and did not loose their hold. The squares 
still held out after twelve assaults. Ney had 
four horses killed under him, and one-half 
of the cuirassiers remained on the plateau. 
This struggle lasted two hours. The Eng- 
Ush army was profoundly shaken; & there 
is no doubt that, had not the cuirassiers 
been weakened in their attack by the dis- 
aster of the hollow way, they would have 
broken through the center & decided the 
victory. This extraordinary cavalry pet- 
rified Clinton, who had seen Talavera and 
Badajoz s<^ Wellington, three parts van- 
quished, admired heroically; he said in a 
low voice, "Splendid!*' The cuirassiers 
annihilated seven squares out of thirteen, 
captured or spiked sixty guns, and took 
six English regimental flags, which three 
cuirassiers & three chasseurs of the guard 
carried to the emperor before the farm of 
La Belle AUiance. 

69 



Wellington's situation had grown worse. 
s^ This strange battle resembled a fight 
betw^een two savage wounded men, who 
constantly lose their blood while contin- 
uing the struggle s^ Which would be the 
first to fall? The combat for the plateau 
continued s^ How far did the cuirassiers 
get? No one could say; but it is certain 
that on the day after the battle, a cuiras- 
sier and his horse w^ere found dead on the 
w^eighing machine of Mont St. Jean, at the 
very spot where the Nivelles, Genappe, 
La Hulpe, & Brussels roads intersect each 
other so^ This horseman had pierced the 
English lines. One of the men who picked 
up this corpse still lives at Mont St. Jean; 
his name is Dehaye, and he was eighteen 
years of age at the time ^^ Wellington 
felt himself giving way, and the crisis was 
close at hand ^^ The cuirassiers had not 
succeeded, in the sense that the EngHsh 
center had not been broken. Everybody 
held the plateau, and nobody held it; but 
in the end, the greater portion remained 
in the hands of the English s^ Welhngton 
had the village and the plain ; Ney, only 
the crest and the slope. Both sides seemed 
to have taken root in this mournful soil. 

70 



But the weakness of the English seemed 
irremediable, for the hemorrhage of this 
army was horrible s«» Kempt on the left 
wing asked for reinforcements. "There 
are none/* Wellington replied s^ Almost 
at the same moment, by a strange coinci- 
dence which depicts the exhaustion of 
both armies, Ney asked Napoleon for in- 
fantry, & Napoleon answered, "Infantry? 
Where does he expect me to get them ? 
Does he think I can make them ? *' 
Still the EngUsh army was the worse of 
the two, the furious attacks of these great 
squadrons with their iron cuirasses and 
steel chests had crushed their infantry. A 
few men round the colors marked the 
place of a regiment, and some battalions 
were only commanded by a captain or a 
lieutenant so» Alten's division, already so 
maltreated at La Haye Sainte, was nearly 
destroyed; the intrepid Belgians of Van 
Kluze*s brigade lay among the wheat along 
the Nivelles road; hardly any were left 
of those Dutch Grenadiers who, in 1811, 
fought Wellington in Spain, on the French 
side, and who, in 1815, joined the English 
and fought Napoleon. The loss in officers 
was considerable; Lord Uxbridge, who 

71 



had his leg interred the next day, had a 
fractured knee so» If on the side of the 
French in this contest of the cuirassiers, 
Delord, THeretier, Colbert, Duof , Travers 
& Blancard were hors de combat, on the 
side of the English, Alten was wounded, 
Barnes w^as w^ounded, Delancey killed, 
VanMeeren killed, Ompteda killed, Well- 
ington's staff decimated,— and England 
had the heaviest scale in this balance of 
blood s^ The Second Regiment of foot- 
guards had lost five lieutenant-colonels, 
four captains, and three ensigns; the First 
Battalion of the Thirtieth had lost twenty- 
four officers, and one hundred and twelve 
men; the Seventy-ninth Highlanders had 
twenty-four officers wounded, & eighteen 
officers and four hundred and fifty men 
killed. Cumberland's Hanoverian Hussars, 
an entire regiment, having their Colonel 
Hacke at their head, who at a later date was 
tried and cashiered, turned bridle during 
the flight and fled into the forest of Soig- 
nies, spreading the rout as far as Brussels. 
The w^agons, ammunition trains, baggage 
trains, & ambulance carts full of wounded, 
on seeing the French, gave ground, and 
approaching the forest, rushed into it; the 

72 



Dutch, sabered by the French cavalry, 
broke in confusion. From Vert Coucou to 
Groenendael, a distance of two leagues on 
the Brussels roads, there was, according to 
the testimony of Uving witnesses, a dense 
crowd of fugitives, and the panic was so 
great that it assailed the Prince de Conde 
at Mechlin and Louis XVIII. at Ghent s©^ 
With the exception of the weak reserve 
echelonned behind the field hospital es- 
tablished at the farm of Mont St. Jean, and 
Vivian's and Vandeleur's brigades, which 
flanked the left wing, Wellington had no 
cavalry left, and many of the guns lay 
dismounted b^ These facts are confessed 
by Siborne, and Pringle, exaggerating the 
danger, goes so far as to state that the 
Anglo-Dutch army was reduced to thirty- 
four thousand men s<^ The Iron Duke 
remained firm, but his lips blanched. The 
Austrian commissioner Vincent, and the 
Spanish commissioner Alava, w^ho were 
present at the battle, thought the Duke 
lost; at five o'clock Wellington looked at 
his watch, and could be heard muttering, 
**Blucher or night.'* 

It was at this moment that a distant line 
of bayonets glistened on the heights on 

73 



the side of Frischemont s^ This was the 
climax of the gigantic drama. 




BuloAV to the Rescue 

IVERYBODY knowsNa- 
poleon's awful mistake; 
Grouchy expected, and 
Blucher coming up, 
death instead of life &^ 
Destiny has such turn- 
ings as this; men antici- 
pate the throne of the 
world, and perceive St. 
Helena. If the little shepherd who served 
as guide to Bulow^, Blucher's lieutenant, 
had advised him to debouch from the for- 
est above Frischemont, instead of below 
Plancenoit, the form of the nineteenth 
century would have been different, for 
Napoleon would have w^on the battle of 
Waterloo. By any other road than that be- 
low Plancenoit the Prussian army would 
have come upon a ravine impassable, by 
artillery, &Bulow would not have arrived. 
s^ Now one hour's delay— the Prussian 
general Muffling declares it— and Blucher 
would not have found Wellington erect. 

74 



--**The Battle was lost** s^ It was high 
time, as we see, for Bulow to arrive, and 
as it was he had been greatly delayed s<^ 
He had bivouacked at Dieu-le-Mont and 
started at daybreak, but the roads w^ere 
impracticable, and his division stuck in 
the mud. The ruts came up to the axletree 
of the guns; moreover, he was compelled 
to cross the Dyle by the narrow^ bridge 
of Wavre; the street leading to the bridge 
had been burnt by the French, & artillery 
train and limbers, which could not pass 
between the two rows of blazing houses, 
w^ere compelled to wait till the fire was 
extinguished s^ By midday Bulow*s van- 
guard had scarce reached Chapelle Saint 
Lambert. 

Had the action begun two hours sooner, 
it would have been over at four o'clock, 
and Blucher would have fallen upon the 
battle gained by Napoleon. At midday, the 
emperor had been first to notice through 
his telescope on the extreme horizon, 
something which fixed his attention, and 
he said, **I see over there a cloud which 
appears to me to be troops.'* ^^ Then he 
asked the Duke of Dalmatia, "Soult, what 
do you see in the direction of Chapelle 

75 



Saint Lambert ? " The marshal, after look- 
ing through his telescope, replied, "Four 
or five thousand men, sire." ^^ It was 
evidently Grouchy, still they remained 
motionless in the mist ^^ All the staff 
examined the cloud pointed out by the 
emperor, & some said, " They are columns 
halting, ' ' but the ma j ority were of opinion 
that they were trees ^^ The truth is that 
the cloud did not move, and the emperor 
detached DoncouFs division of light cav- 
alry to reconnoiter in the direction of this 
dark point. 

Bulow, in fact, had not stirred, for his 
vanguard was very weak and could effect 
nothing. He was obliged to wait for the 
main body of the army, and had orders 
to concentrate his troops before forming 
line; but at five o'clock, Blucher, seeing 
Wellington's danger, ordered Bulow to at- 
tack, & employed the remarkable phrase, 
"We must let the English army breathe." 
s^ A short time after, Losthin's, Killer's 
Hacke's, and Ryssel's brigades deployed 
in front of Lobau's corps, the cavalry of 
Prince William of Prussia debouched from 
the Bois de Paris, Plancenoit was in flames, 
& the Prussian cannon-balls began pouring 

76 




even upon the ranks of the guard held in 
reserve behind Napoleon. 

The Guard 

)HE rest is known, -^ the 
irruption of a third army 
& the battle dislocated; 
eighty-six cannon thun- 
dering simultaneously ; 
Pirch I. coming up with 
Bulow; Ziethen*s cav- 
alry led by Blucher in 
person; the French now 
driven back; Marcognet swept from the 
plateau of Ohain; Durutte dislodged from 
Papelotte; Donzelot & Quiot falling back; 
Lobau attacked on the flank ; a new bat- 
tle rushing at nightfall on the w^eakened 
French regiments; the whole English line 
resuming the offensive, and pushed for- 
ward; the gigantic gap made in the French 
army by the combined English & Prussian 
batteries ; the extermination, the disaster 
in front, the disaster on the flank, and the 
guard forming line amid this fearful con- 
vulsion s<^ As they felt they were going 
to death, they shouted, "Long live the 

77 



emperor!" b^ History has nothing more 
striking than this death-rattle breaking 
out into acclamations. The sky had been 
covered the ^vhole day, but at this very 
moment, eight o'clock in the evening, 
the clouds parted in the horizon, and the 
sinister red gloAV of the setting sun was 
visible through the elms on the Nivelles 
road. It had been seen to rise at Austerlitz. 
C Each battalion of the guard, for this de- 
nouement, was commanded by a general; 
Friant, Michel, Roguet, Harlot, Mallet, & 
Pont de Morvan, were there. When the tall 
bearskins of the Grenadiers of the Guard 
with the large eagle device appeared, sym- 
metrical in line and calm, in the twilight 
of this fight, the enemy felt a respect for 
France; they fancied they saw^ twenty vic- 
tories entering the battle-field with out- 
stretched wings, and the men who were 
victors, esteeming themselves conquered, 
fell back; but Wellington shouted, **Up, 
guards, and take steady aim." The red 
regiment of English guards, which had 
been lying down behind the hedges, rose; 
a storm of canister rent the tricolor flag 
w^aving above the heads of the French; 
all rushed forward, and the supreme car- 

78 



nage commenced s<^ The imperial guard 
felt in the darkness the army giving ^vay 
around them, and the vast staggering of 
the rout; they heard the cry of ^^ Sauve 
qui pent!'' substituted for the ** ViveVem- 
pereur!'' & with flight behind them they 
continued to advance, hundreds falling at 
every step they took s^ None hesitated 
or evinced timidity; the privates were as 
heroic as the generals, and not one at- 
tempted to escape suicide. 
Ney, wild, and grand in the consciousness 
of accepted death, offered himself to every 
blow in this combat s^ He had his fifth 
horse killed under him here s^ Bathed in 
perspiration, with a flame in his eye, and 
foam on his lips, his uniform unbuttoned, 
one of his epaulettes half-cut through by 
the sabre-cut of a horse-guard, and his 
decoration of the great eagle dented by a 
bullet, — bleeding, muddy, magnificent, 
and holding a broken sword in his hand, 
he shouted, ** Come & see how a marshal 
of France dies on the battle-field ! " But 
it was in vain, he did not die si^ He 
w^as haggard and indignant, and hurled at 
Drouet d*Erlon the question, "Are you 
not going to get yourself killed ?'* s<^ He 

79 



yelled amid the roar of all this artillery, 
crushing a handful of men, "Oh! there is 
nothing for me! I should like all these 
English cannon-balls to enter my chest ! " 
s«» You were reserved for French bullets, 
unfortunate man. 

The Catastrophe 

)HE rout in the rear of the 
guard was mournful; 
the army suddenly gave 
way on all sides simul- 
Ij taneously, at Hougo- 
mont. La Haye Sainte, 
Papelotte, & Plancenoit. 
The cry of * * treachery ' * 
was followed by that of 
^^ Sauve qui pent r* s^ An army which 
disbands is like a thaw,— all gives way, 
cracks, floats, rolls, falls, comes into col- 
lision, and dashes forward. Ney borrows 
a horse, leaps on it, & without hat, stock 
or sword, dashes across the Brussels road, 
stopping at once English and French. He 
tries to hold back the army, he recalls it, 
he insults it, he clings wildly to the rout 
to hold it back s<^ The soldiers fly from 

80 




him, shouting, "Long live Marshal Ney !'* 
Two regiments of Durotte's move back- 
ward & forward in terror, and as it were 
tossed between the sabres of the Hussars 
and the musketry fire of Kempt*s, Best's 
and Pack's brigades. A rout is the highest 
of all confusions, for friends kill each other 
in order to escape, and squadrons & bat- 
talions dash against & destroy each other. 
Lobau at one extremity and Reille at the 
other are carried away by the torrent. In 
vain does Napoleon build a w^all of what 
is left of the guard; in vain does he expend 
his own social squadrons in a final effort. 
s<^ Quiot retires before Vivian, Kellerman 
before Vandeleur, Lobau before Bulow, 
Moraud before Pirch, and Domor and Su- 
bervie before Prince William of Prussia. 
Guyot, who led the emperor's squadrons 
to the charge, falls beneath the horses of 
English dragoons. Napoleon gallops along 
the line of fugitives, harangues, urges, 
threatens & implores them; all the mouths 
that shouted ** Long Uve the emperor" in 
the morning, remained wide open; they 
hardly knew him. The Prussian cavalry, 
who had come up fresh, dash forward, cut 
down, kill and exterminate. The artillery 

81 



horses dash forward with the guns; the 
train soldiers unharness the horses from 
the caissons and escape on them; wagons 
overthrown and with their four wheels 
in the air, block up the road and supply 
opportunities for massacre s<^ Men crush 
each other and trample over the dead and 
over the living so^ A multitude wild with 
terror fill the roads, the paths, the bridges, 
the plains, the hills, the valleys, and the 
w^oods, which are thronged by this flight 
of forty thousand men. Cries, desperation; 
knapsacks & muskets cast into the wheat; 
passages cut with the edge of the sabres; 
no comrades, no officers, no generals 
recognized — and indescribable terror s«^ 
Ziethen sabering France at his ease. The 
lions become kids s<^ Such was this fight. 
CAt Genappe, an effort was made to 
turn and rally s^ Lobau collected three 
hundred men; the entrance of the village 
was barricaded, but at the first round of 
Prussian canister all began flying again, 
and Lobau w^as made prisoner. This shot 
may still be seen, buried in the gable of 
an old brick house on the right of the 
road, just before you reach Genappe. The 
Prussians dashed into Genappe, doubtless 

82 



furious at being such small victors, and 
the pursuit was monstrous, for Blucher 
commanded extermination. Roguet had 
given the mournful example of threaten- 
ing with death any French Grenadier who 
brought in a Prussian prisoner, & Blucher 
surpassed Roguet. Duchesme, general of 
the young guard, who was pursued into 
the doorway of an inn in Genappe, sur- 
rendered his sword to an Hussar of death, 
who took the sword & killed the prisoner. 
The victory was completed by the assas- 
sination of the vanquished. Let us punish 
as we are writing history, — old Blucher 
dishonored himself. This ferocity set the 
seal on the disaster; the desperate rout 
passed through Genappe, passed through 
Ouatre Bras, passed through Sombreffe, 
passed through Frasnes, passed through 
Thuin, passed through Charleroi, & only 
stopped at the frontier s^ Alas ! and who 
was it flying in this way ? The grand army. 
C Did this vertigo, this terror, this over- 
throw of the greatest bravery that ever 
astonished history, take place without a 
cause? No. The shadow of a mighty right 
hand is cast over Waterloo ; it is the day 
of destiny, and the force which is above 

83 



man produced that day. Hence the terror, 
hence all those great souls laying down 
their swords. Those who had conquered 
Europe, fell crushed, having nothing more 
to say or do, and feeling a terrible pres- 
ence in the shadow s^ Hoc erat in fatis. 
On that day, the perspective of the human 
race was changed, and Waterloo is the 
hinge of the nineteenth century s^ The 
disappearance of the great man w^as nec- 
essary for the advent of the great age, and 
He who cannot be answered undertook 
the task. The panic of the heroes admits 
of explanation; in the battle of Waterloo, 
there is more than a storm; there is a 
meteor s^ s^ 

At nightfall, Bernard and Bertrand seized 

by the skirt of his coat in a field near 

Genappe, a haggard, thoughtful, gloomy 

man, who, carried so far by the current 

of the rout, had just dismounted, passed 

the bridle over his arm, and was now, 

with wandering eye, returning alone 

to Waterloo s^ It was Napoleon, 

the immense somnambulist of the 

shattered dream still striving 

to advance s^ s^ s^ s^ 



u 




The Last Square 

FEW squares of the 
guard, standing motion- 
less in the swash of the 
rout, lilie rocks in run- 
ning water, held out till 
night s«» They awaited 
the double shadow of 
night and death, and let 
them surround them s^ 
Each regiment, isolated from the others, 
and no longer connected with the army 
which was broken on all sides, died where 
it stood s^ In order to perform this last 
exploit, they had taken up a position, 
some on the heights of Rossomme, others 
on the plain of Mont St. Jean s^ The 
gloomy squares, deserted, conquered, and 
terrible, struggled formidably with death, 
for Ulm, Wagram, Jena, and Friedland 
were dying in it b^ When twilight set in 
at nine in the evening, one square still 
remained at the foot of the plateau of 
Mont St. Jean s^ In this mournful valley, 
at the foot of the slope scaled by the 
cuirassiers, now inundated by the English 
masses, beneath the converging fire of the 

85 



hostile and victorious artillery, under a 
fearful hailstorm of projectiles, this square 
still resisted. It was commanded by an ob- 
scure officer of the name of Cambronne. 
Sfr^ At each volley the square diminished, 
but continued to reply to the canister 
with musketry fire, and each moment 
contracted its four walls. Fugitives in the 
distance, stopping at moments to draw 
breath, listened in the darkness to this 
gloomy diminishing thunder. 
When this legion had become only a hand- 
ful, when their colors were but a rag, 
when their ammunition was exhausted, 
and muskets were clubbed, and when the 
pile of corpses was greater than the Uving 
group, the victors felt a species of sacred 
awe, & the English artillery ceased firing. 
It was a sort of respite; these combatants 
had around them an army of specters, 
outlines of mounted men, the black pro- 
file of guns, and the white sky visible 
through the wheels; the colossal death's 
head which heroes ever glimpse in the 
smoke of a battle, advanced and looked 
at them. They could hear in the twiUght 
gloom that the guns were being loaded; 
the lighted matches, resembling the eyes 

86 



of a tiger in the night, formed a circle 
round their heads s^ The linstocks of the 
English batteries approached the guns, 
and at this moment an English general, 
Colville according to some, Maitland ac- 
cording to others, holding the supreme 
moment suspended over the heads of these 
men, shouted to them, ** Brave French- 
men, surrender!" 

Cambronne answered, **Go to Hell! " 
On hearing this insulting word, the Eng- 
lish voice replied, **Fire!** The batteries 
belched forth flame, the hill trembled; 
from all these bronze throats issued a last 
and fearful eruption of canister; a vast 
smoke, whitened by the rising moon, 
rolled along the valley, and when it dis- 
appeared, there w^as nothing left s^ This 
formidable remnant w^as annihilated, the 
guard w^as dead s^ The four walls of the 
living redoubt were levelled with the 
ground; here and there a dying convul- 
sion could be seen so» And it was thus 
that the French legions, greater than the 
Roman legions, expired at Mont St. Jean 
on the rain and blood-soaked ground, at 
the spot which Joseph, who carries the 
Nivelles mail-bags, now passes at four 

87 




o'clock every morning, whistling and 
gaily flogging his horse. 

Quot Libras in Dieu 

}HE battle of Waterloo is 
an enigma as obscure for 
those who gained it as 
for him who lost it. To 
Napoleon it is a panic ; 
Blucher sees nothing in 
it but fire; Wellington 
does not understand it 
all. Look at the reports; 
the bulletins are confused; the commen- 
taries are entangled ; the latter stammer, 
the former stutter s©^ Jomini divides the 
battle of Waterloo into four moments; 
Muffling cuts it into three acts; Charras, 
although we do not entirely agree w^ith 
him in all his appreciations, has alone 
caught with his haughty eye the charac- 
teristic lineaments of this catastrophe pf 
human genius contending w^ith divine 
chance s^ All the other historians suffer 
from a certain bedazzlement in which they 
grope about. It was a flashing day, in truth 
the overthrow of the military monarchy 



which, to the great stupor of the kings, has 
dragged down all kingdoms, the downfall 
of strength and the rout of war. 
In this event, which bears the stamp of 
superhuman necessity, men play but a 
small part; but if we take Waterloo from 
Wellington & Blucher, does that deprive 
England and Germany of anything ? No. 
s^ Neither illustrious England nor august 
Germany is in question in the problem of 
Waterloo, for thank heaven, nations are 
great without the mournful achievements 
of the sword s<^ Neither Germany, nor 
England nor France is held in a scabbard; 
at this day when Waterloo is only a clash 
of sabres, Germany has Goethe above 
Blucher, & England, Byron above Well- 
ington. A mighty dawn of ideas is peculiar 
to our age, and in this dawn England and 
Germany have their own magnificent 
flash s<^ They are majestic because they 
think; the high level they bring to civili- 
zation is intrinsic to them; it comes from 
themselves and not from an accident. Any 
aggrandizement the nineteenth century 
may have cannot boast of Waterloo as its 
fountain head; for only barbarous nations 
grow suddenly after a victory — it is the 

89 



transient vanity of torrents swollen by a 
storm. Civilized nations, especially at the 
present day, are not elevated or debased 
by the good or evil fortune of a captain, 
and their specific weight in the human 
family results from something more than 
a battle. Their honor, dignity, enlighten- 
ment, and genius, are not numbers which 
those gamblers, heroes and conquerors, 
can stake in the lottery of battles s^ Very 
often a battle lost is progress gained, and 
less of glory more of liberty. The drum- 
mer is silent and reason speaks; it is the 
game of who loses w^ins ^^ Let us, then, 
speak of Waterloo coldly from both sides, 
& render to chance the things that belong 
to chance, and to God what is God*s.What 
is Waterloo, — a victory? No; a quine in 
the lottery, w^on by Europe and paid by 
France ; it w^as hardly worth while erect- 
ing a lion for it. 

Waterloo, by the w^ay, is the strangest 
encounter recorded in history; Napoleon 
and Wellington are not enemies, but con- 
traries &^ Never did God, who delights 
in antitheses, produce a more striking 
contrast or a more extraordinary confron- 
tation. On one side precision, foresight, 

90 



geometry, prudence, a retreat assured, re- 
serves prepared, an obstinate coolness, an 
imperturbable method, strategy profiting 
by the ground, tactics balancing battal- 
ions, carnage measured by a plumb-line, 
war regulated watch in hand, nothing left 
voluntarily to accident, old classic courage 
and absolute correctness s^ On the other 
side we have intuition, divination, military 
strangeness, superhuman instinct, a flash- 
ing glance; something that gazes like the 
eagle and strikes like lightning, all the 
mysteries of a profound mind, association 
with destiny; the river, the plain, the 
forest and the hill summoned, and to some 
extent compelled to obey, the despot go- 
ing so far as even to tyrannize over the 
battle-field; faith in a star blended with 
strategic science, heightening, but troub- 
ling it s«» Wellington was the Bareme of 
war. Napoleon was its Michael Angelo, 
and this true genius was conquered by 
calculation. On both sides somebody was 
expected; and it was the exact-calculator 
who succeeded s^ Napoleon waited for 
Grouchy, who did not come; Wellington 
waited for Blucher, and he came. 
Wellington is the classical war taking its 

91 



revenge; Bonaparte, in his dawn, had met 
it in Italy and superbly defeated it, — the 
old owl fled before the young vulture s^ 
The old tactics had been not only over- 
thrown, but scandalized. Who was this 
Corsican of six-and-twenty years of age? 
What meant this splendid ignoramus who, 
having everything against him, nothing 
for him, without provisions, ammunition, 
guns, shoes, almost mthout an army, with 
a handful of men against masses, dashed 
at allied Europe, & absurdly gained impos- 
sible victories? Who was this newcomer 
of w^ar who possessed the effrontery of a 
planet ? s^ The academic military school 
excommunicated him, while bolting, and 
hence arose an implacable rancor of the 
old Caesarism against the new, of the old 
sabre against the flashing sword, and of 
the chess-board against genius. On June 
18, 1815, this rancor got the best; and 
beneath Lodi, Montebello, Montenotte, 
Mantua, Marengo, and Areola, it wrote, 
—Waterloo. It was a triumph of medioc- 
rity, sweet to majorities, and destiny 
consented to this irony s^ In his decline. 
Napoleon found a young Suvarov before 
him— in fact, it is only necessary to blanch 

92 



Wellington's hair in order to have a Su- 
varov s^ Waterloo is a battle of the first 
class, gained by a captain of the second. 
CWhat must be admired in the battle of 
Waterloo is England, the English firm- 
ness, the English resolution, the EngUsh 
blood, & what England had really superb 
in it, is (without offense) herself; it is not 
her captain, but her army s^ WeUington, 
strangely ungrateful, declares in his des- 
patch to Lord Bathurst, that his army, the 
one which fought on June 18, 1815, was a 
* * detestable army. ' ' What does the gloomy 
pile of bones buried in the trenches of 
Waterloo think of this ? England has been 
too modest to herself in her treatment of 
Wellington, for making him so great is 
making herself small. Wellington is merely 
a hero like any other man ^^ The Scotch 
Greys, the Life Guards, Maitland & Mitch- 
ell's regiments. Pack & Kempt's infantry, 
Ponsonby and Somerset's cavalry, the 
Highlanders playing the bagpipes under 
the shower of canister, Ry land's battal- 
ions, the fresh recruits who could hardly 
manage a musket, & yet held their ground 
against the old bands of Essling & Rivoli 
—all this is grand. Wellington was tena- 

93 



cious, that was his merit, and we do not 
deny it to him, but the lowest of his pri- 
vates and his troopers was quite as solid 
as he, and the iron soldier is as good as 
the iron duke. For our part all our glori- 
fication is offered to the English soldier, 
the English army, the English nation; and 
if there must be a trophy, it is to England 
that this trophy is owing. The Waterloo 
column w^ould be more just, if, instead of 
the figure of a man, it raised to the clouds 
the statue of a people. 
But this great England will be irritated by 
what we are writing here, for she still has 
feudal illusions, after her 1688, and the 
French 1789 s<^ This people believes in j 
inheritance and hierarchy, and while no i 
other excels it in power and glory, it es- j 
teems itself as a nation & not as a people, i 
As a people, it readily subordinates itself, 
and takes a lord as its head, the workman 
lets himself be despised ; the soldier puts 
up with flogging. It w^ill be remembered 
that, at the battle of Inkermann, a sergeant 
who, it appears, saved the British army, 
could not be mentioned by Lord Raglan, 
because the military hierarchy does not 
allow any hero below the rank of officer 

94 



^to be mentioned in despatclies. What we 
admire before all, in an encounter like 
Waterloo, is the prodigious skill of chance. 
The night rain, the wall of Hougomont, 
the hollow way of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to 
the cannon, Napoleon's guide deceiving 
him, Bulow's guide enlightening him — all 
this cataclysm is marvellously managed. 
C Altogether, we will assert, there is more 
of a massacre than of a battle in Waterloo. 
Waterloo, of all pitched battles, is the one 
which had the smallest front for such 
a number of combatants s«» Napoleon's, 
three-quarters of a league, Wellington's, 
half a league, and seventy-two thousand 
combatants on either side ^i^ From this 
density came the carnage. The following 
calculation has been made and proportion 
established: Loss of men at Austerlitz, 
French, fourteen per cent; Russian, thirty 
per cent; Austrian, forty-four per cent; 
at Wagram, French, thirteen per cent; 
Austrian, fourteen per cent; at Moskova, 
French, thirty-seven per cent; Russian, 
forty-four per cent; at Bautzen, French, 
thirteen per cent; Russian and Prussian, 
fourteen per cent; at Waterloo, French, 
fifty-six per cent; Allies, thirty-one per 

95 



cent;— total for Waterloo, forty-one per 
cent, or out of one hundred & forty-four 
thousand fighting men, sixty thousand 
killed s^ s^ 

The field of Waterloo has at the present 
day that calmness which belongs to the 
earth, & resembles all plains, but at night, 
a sort of visionary mist rises from it, and 
if any traveler walk about it, and listen 
and dream like Virgil on the mournful 
plain of Philippi, the hallucination of the 
catastrophe seizes upon him. The frightful 
June 18 lives again, the false monumental 
hill is levelled, the wondrous lion is dis- 
sipated, the battle-field resumes its reality, 
lines of infantry undulate on the plain, 
furious galloping crosses the horizon; the 
startled dreamer sees the flash of sabres, 
the sparkle of bayonets, the red light of 
shells, the monstrous collision of thunder- 
bolts; he hears like a death-groan from the 
tomb, the vague clamor of the phantom 
battle s<^ These shadows are grenadiers; 
these flashes are cuirassiers; this skeleton 
is Napoleon; this skeleton is Wellington; 
all this is non-existent, and yet still com- 
bats, and the ravines are stained purple, 
and the trees rustle, & there is fury even in 

96 



the clouds & in the darkness, while all the 
stern heights, Mont St. Jean, Hougomont, 
Frischemont, Papelotte, and Plancenoit, 
seem confusedly crowned by hosts of 
specters exterminating one another. 

Ought We Applaud ? 

|HERE exists a highly re- 
spectable liberal school, 
which does not detest 
Waterloo, but we do 
not belong to it. For us 
Waterloo is only the 
stupefied date of liberty; 
for such an eagle to issue 
from such a shell is as- 
suredly unexpected, s^ Waterloo, if we 
place ourselves at the culminating point 
of the question, is intentionally a counter- 
revolutionary victory, and it is Europe 
against France; it is Petersburg, Berlin, 
and Vienna against Paris; it is the statu 
quo opposed to the initiative; it is July 
14, 1789, attacked through March 20, 1815; 
it is all the monarchies clearing the decks 
to conquer the indomitable French spirit 
of revolt. The dream was to extinguish 

97 




this vast people which had been in a state 
of eruption for six-and-twenty years, and 
for this purpose, Brunswick, Nassau, the 
Romanoffs, Hohenzoliern and the Haps- 
burger coalesced w^ith the Bourbons, and 
Waterloo carries divine right on its pillion. 
It is true that as the empire was despotic, 
royalty, by the natural reaction of things, 
was compelled to be liberal, and a con- 
stitutional order issued from Waterloo, 
much to the regret of the conquerors. The 
fact is, that the Revolution can never be 
really conquered, and being providential 
& absolutely fatal, it constantly reappears, 
before Waterloo in Napoleon overthrow- 
ing the old thrones, after Waterloo in 
Louis XVIII. granting and enduring the 
charter. Bonaparte places a postillion on 
the throne of Naples, and a sergeant on the 
throne of Sweden, employing inequality 
to demonstrate equality ; Louis XVIII. at 
St. Ouen countersigns the declaration of 
the rights of man. If you wish to under- 
stand w^hat revolution is, call it progress; j 
and if you wish to understand what pro- 
gress is, call it to-morrow ^©» To-morrow 
ever does its work irresistibly and does it | 
to-day, and it ever strangely attains itsl 

98 



object s<^ It employs Wellington to make 
an orator of Foy who was only a soldier. 
Foy falls at Hougomont & raises himself 
in the tribune s^ Such is the process of 
progress, and that workman has no bad 
tools; it fits to its divine work the man 
who bestrode the Alps and the old totter- 
ing patient of Pere Elysee, and it employs 
both the gouty man and the conqueror — 
the conqueror externally, the gouty man 
at home. Waterloo, by cutting short the 
demolition of thrones by the sword, had 
no other effect than to continue the rev- 
olutionary work on another side s^ The 
sabres have finished, and the turn of the 
thinkers arrives; the age which Waterloo 
wished to arrest marched over it, & con- 
tinued its route, and this sinister victory 
was gained by liberty. 
Still it is incontestable that what triumphed 
at Waterloo; what smiled behind Welling- 
ton; what procured him all the marshals' 
staffs of Europe, including, by the way, 
that of marshal of France; what rolled 
along joyously the wheelbarrows of earth 
mingled with bones, to erect the founda- 
tion for the lion, on whose pedestal is 
inscribed the date, June 18, 1815; what 

99 



encouraged Blucher in cutting down the 
routed army; and what from the plateau 
of Mont St. Jean hovered over France like 
a prey, — was the counter-revolution. It is 
the counter-revolution that muttered the 
hideous word, ** dismemberment,*' but on 
reaching Paris it had a close view of the 
crater, it felt that the ashes burnt its feet, 
and it reflected. It went back to the job 
of stammering a charter. C. Let us only see 
in Waterloo what there really is in it 
There is no intentional liberty, for 
the counter-revolution w^as invol- 
untarily liberal in the same way 
as Napoleon, through a corre- 
sponding phenomenon, was 
involuntarily a Revolution- 
ist s^ On June 18, 1815, 
Robespierre on horse- 
back was thrown s«^ 




100 




Divine Right Restored 

lITH the fall of the dicta- 
torship, an entire Euro- 
pean system crumbled 
away, and the empire 
vanished in a shadow 
which resembled that 
of the expiring Roman 
world. Nations escaped 
from the abyss as in the 
time of the barbarians, but the barbarism 
of 1815, which could be called by its fa- 
miliar name, the counter-revolution, had 
but little breath, soon began to pant, and 
stopped ^^ The empire, we confess, was 
lamented and by heroic eyes, & its glory 
consists in the sword -made scepter, — the 
empire was glory itself. It had spread over 
the whole earth all the light that tyranny 
can give— a dim light, we will say, an ob- 
scure light, for when compared with real 
day, it is night. This disappearance of the 
night produced the effect of an eclipse. 
C Louis XVIII. re-entered Paris, and the 
dances of July 8, effaced the enthusiasm 
of March 20 ^^ The Corsican became the 
antithesis of the Bearnais, and the flag on 

101 



the dome of the Tuileries was white s^ 
The exile was enthroned, and the deal 
table of Hartwell was placed before the 
easy chair of Louis XIV. People talked of 
Bouvines & Fontenoy as if they occurred 
only yesterday, w^hile Austerlitz was an- 
tiquated. The throne and the altar frater- 
nized majestically, and one of the most 
indubitable forms of the welfare of society 
in the nineteenth century was established 
in France and on the continent— Europe 
took the w^hite cockade. Trestaillon was 
celebrated, and the motto, ^^Necpluribus 
impar** reappeared in the stone beams 
representing a sun on the front of the 
barracks, on the Quai d'Orsay s^ Where 
there had been an imperial guard, there 
w^as a "red household ;** & the arch of the 
Carrousel, if loaded with badly endured 
victories, feeling not at home in these 
novelties, and perhaps slightly ashamed 
of Marengo and Areola, got out of the 
difficulty by accepting the statue of the 
Due d'Angouleme. The cemetery of the 
Madeleine, a formidable public grave in 
1793, was covered with marble and jasper, 
because the bones of Louis XVL & Marie 
Antoinette were mingled with that dust. 

102 



In the moat of Vincennes a tomb emerged 
from the ground, as a reminder that the 
Due d'Enghien died there in the same 
month in which Napoleon was crowned. 
Pope Pius VII. who had performed the 
ceremony very close upon that death, 
tranquilly blessed the downfall, as he had 
blessed the elevation s<^ There was at 
Schonbrunn a shadow four years of age, 
whom it was seditious to call the king of 
Rome. And these things took place, and 
these kings regained their thrones, and 
the master of Europe was put in a cage, 
and the old regime became the new, and 
the light and the shadow of the earth 
changed places, because on the afternoon 
of a summer day, a peasant boy said to a 
Prussian in a wood, "Go this way and 
not that!** 

That 1815 was a sort of melancholy April; 
the old unhealthy and venomous realities 
assumed a new aspect. Falsehood espoused 
1789, divine right put on the mask of a 
charter; fictions became constitutional; 
prejudices, superstitions & afterthoughts 
having article fourteen in their hearts, var- 
nished themselves with liberalism b^ The 
snakes cast their slough. Man had been at 

103 



once aggrandized and lessened by Napo- 
leon; idealism, in this reign of splendid 
materialism, received the strange name 
of ideology. It was a grave imprudence 
of a great man to ridicule the future, but 
the people, that food for powder, so am- 
orous of gunners, sought him s<^ "Where 
is he? What is he doing?" "Napoleon is 
dead,'* said a passer-by to an invalid of 
Marengo and Waterloo s^ "He dead! " 
the soldier exclaimed; "Much you know^ 
about him!'* s^ Imaginations defied this 
thrown man. Europe after Waterloo was 
dark, for some enormous gap was long 
left unfilled after the disappearance of Na- 
poleon. The kings placed themselves in 
this gap, and old Europe took advantage 
of it to effect a reformation. There was a 
holy alliance — Belle Alliance, the fatal 
field of Waterloo had said beforehand ^^ 
In the presence of the old Europe recon- 
stituted, the lineaments of a new France 
were sketched in. The future, derided by 
the emperor, made its entry and wore on 
its brow the star— Liberty. The ardent eyes 
of the youthful generation w^ere turned 
toward it, but, singular to say, they simul- 
taneously felt equally attached to this 

104 



future liberty and to the past Napoleon. 
s<^ Defeat had made the conquered man 
greater; Napoleon fallen seemed better 
than Napoleon standing on his feet s^ 
Those who had triumphed were alarmed. 
s^ England had him guarded by Hudson 
Lowe, and France had him watched by 
Montcheme s^ His folded arms became 
the anxiety of thrones, and Alexander 
christened him his nightmare. This terror 
resulted from the immense amount of rev- 
olution he had in him, and it is this which 
explains and excuses Bonapartistic liber- 
alism. This phantom caused the old world 
to tremble, and kings sat uneasily on their 
throne, with the rock of St. Helena on the 
horizon s^ s^ 

While Napoleon was dying at Longwood, 
the sixty thousand men who fell at Water- 
loo rotted calmly, and something of their 
peace spread over the world. The congress 
of Vienna converted it into the treaties of 
1815, & Europe called that the Restoration. 
CSuch is Waterloo, but what does the In- 
finite care? All this tempest, all this cloud, 
this war, & then this peace; all this shadow 
did not for a moment disturb the flash of 
that mighty eye before which a spider, 

105 



leaping from one blade of grass to another, 
equals the eagle flying from tower to tower 
at Notre Dame. 

So here endeth the volume of The Battle of 
Waterloo^ by Victor Hugo, translated from the 
French by Lascelles Wraxall, and done into a 
book by The Roycrof ters at their Shop, which 
is in E^st Aurora, Erie County, New York, and 
completed in the Month of April, MCMVII 



* • SRop * » 



OCT 1 ^£10 



•41 



